Officers serving ICE warrant in Hackettstown find sisters, 6, 3, 9 months old home alone

Three children, 6, 3 and 9 months old, were found home alone by Hackettstown police who were there to serve an immigration warrant to their father on Wednesday morning.

With an ICE warrant for Luis Froilan Ortega-Calle, 30, of Main Street, Hackettstown, the officers knocked on the door. It was answered by a 6-year-old girl, according to Sgt. Darren Tynan of the Hackettstown Police Department.

The officers investigated the “disheveled and unclean” apartment and found two more little girls, a 3-year-old and a 9-month-old left alone without an adult, Tynan said. The officers determined the three girls were sisters, he said.

As the officers waited outside the apartment building Ortega-Calle and Josselyn Eneida DeLeon-Garcia, 26, of Hackettstown, turned the corner on to Main Street from the alley next to Marley’s Gotham Grill at about 8:30 p.m. 

The two turned and ran down the alley when they saw the officers, Tynan said. They were caught on Sharp Street next to municipal lot #2.

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Ortega-Calle was taken into custody by ICE officers.

The couple, Tynan said, left their children without care or supervision while they went to work from Tuesday around 11:30 p.m. to Wednesday 8:30 a.m.

The Division of Child Protection and Permanency took custody of the children from the scene. On Thursday morning Tynan said the girls were doing well. 

Both parents were charged with three counts of second-degree child neglect. DeLeon Garcia was held in the Warren County Correctional Facility, Ortega-Calle in the Essex County Correctional Facility.

 

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