United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a single father from Honduras in Dunmore on Wednesday while he rode his bicycle to work. Agents later took his elementary school-aged daughter into custody with deportation orders for the two.
Dunmore Mayor Max Conway confirmed the arrest in a phone interview Thursday morning. He was contacted Wednesday by several neighbors around the 1700 block of North Webster Avenue asking if he knew what happened when a man was arrested by ICE agents around 7:45 a.m. ICE did not notify the Dunmore Police Department.
On Wednesday afternoon, ICE officers took the man to the Dunmore Borough Building on South Blakely Street. They met with Conway and Dunmore police and took the man’s daughter into custody. The man, whom Conway did not identify but said was in his late 30s or 40s, has lived in Dunmore for about six years with his daughter, who was a Dunmore Elementary student.
The man was riding his bike to work Wednesday morning when ICE agents pulled up and arrested him in the 1700 block of North Webster Avenue. A photo submitted to The Times-Tribune shows a masked man wearing a tactical vest with a large black “POLICE ICE” patch on the back climbing into the passenger seat of a blue Ford Explorer with police lights parked on North Webster Avenue. Another photo shows the arrested man’s discarded bicycle on the ground.
A man’s discarded bicycle on the sidewalk of the 1700 block of North Webster Avenue in Dunmore, left behind after U.S. ICE agents arrested him on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
“I’m the mayor of a small town. I don’t have any control or authority over federal immigration actions. I can only speak to what I saw. The ICE agents I spoke with were professional, and they answered all my questions, and to their credit, they kept the family together,” Conway said. “But this wasn’t some violent criminal. It was a working single father and his young daughter. I don’t feel any safer knowing they were taken from our community.”
The mayor, who is a father of two young children, said he believes in law and order, but he also believes in logical deportations “focusing on people who are truly dangerous, not families just trying to live their lives.”
The man has no criminal history — he only missed an immigration hearing, Conway said.
“I obviously don’t make these laws, but seeing this up close makes it clear something isn’t working the way it should,” he said. “I keep thinking about that little girl in her Dunmore Bucks sweatshirt with her name on the back. She was part of this community.”
Immigration court is civil, not criminal. Missing the hearing would not result in criminal charges for the man or his daughter, but it would result in an immigration judge issuing an “in absentia” removal order. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, any delay in a person’s appearance to immigration court may result in the person ordered to be removed in absentia. There is no appeal from a removal order issued when the person is absent from court, but parties can file a motion to reopen in order to rescind the in absentia removal order, according to the DOJ.
The father and daughter remain with the federal government, Conway said.
ICE did not respond to an emailed request for comment by late Thursday morning.