Arthur Jemmy was supposed to report to immigration authorities Tuesday morning, but as an undocumented immigrant, he feared he’d be jailed or deported if he went.

In a decision they described as agonizing, Jemmy and his wife, Silfia Tobing, natives of Indonesia, chose instead to take sanctuary at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, in Middlesex County. They moved there Tuesday, with the church offering them a place to live and shelter from federal authorities, who are barred from taking action in houses of worship in most cases.

“We are really scared to go report,” said Jemmy, 40, who had been living with his wife in Edison. “Suddenly, we are going to be given a [monitoring ankle] bracelet or they just handcuff you and put you in detention. The next day they send you back to the country and you don’t know what you are going to do there.”

Jemmy and Tobing are part of a community of Indonesian Christians who came to the United States fleeing persecution in the 1990s and early 2000s and overstayed their tourist visas. They were offered temporary approval to stay under an agreement with federal authorities.

But as the Trump administration takes a harder stance on illegal immigration, authorities are no longer honoring that deal. In the past three months, 11 Indoneisan Christians in New Jersey have been deported or left on their own because they were facing deportation. Jemmy and Tobing said they did not want the same fate.

Jemmy has walked with a cane since he was injured working in a warehouse in 2015. He was knocked off a lift while doing inventory and fell 25 feet, breaking his back. He spent three months in a hospital and did intensive rehabilitation to be able to walk again.

“If they sent him to my country — he had two surgeries. I don’t know if the doctors in Indonesia will help him,” said Tobing, 45, who left her job at a bottling factory before entering the church on Tuesday.

Jemmy said he was terrified about going to immigration jail and being sent back. “I can’t explain it," he said. "I’m so speechless to go through this. … Hopefully [President] Trump can change his heart.”

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Jemmy also does not want to be held detained on immigration charges because of the chronic pain he endures due to his back injury. He also worried what life will be like in Indonesia.

Jemmy had lived in the Poso coastal area, but left due to growing religious violence and threats targeting Christians. He recalled one harrowing incident months before he came to the United States in 2000.

“We were in the middle of church in a ceremony,” he said, describing how militants surrounded the church. “They threw rocks in it and I heard the people saying from outside that they are going to kill the priest and the rest of the church. From there, me and my family started to move out.”

Seeking sanctuary again

Jemmy and Tobing sought sanctuary at the Highland Park church once before. They were among nine Indonesians who stayed there for nearly a year in 2012 and 2013.

They came to the attention of immigration authorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The United States had required all men from certain Muslim-majority countries, including Indonesia, to register if they were undocumented.

Like others in their situation, Jemmy and Tobing missed deadlines to apply for asylum and many were swept up in a spate of arrests by immigration authorities.

Seth Kaper-Dale, pastor of the Reformed Church of Highland Park, took them in and housed them in classrooms that had been converted into bedrooms. Their fight to stay in the country, and the church's efforts to protect them, garnered national media attention. They eventually reached a deal with federal authorities that allowed dozens to stay in the country under an "order of supervision."

They have checked in annually with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, since 2013, and each time their stay was extended. But that changed in February, when deportations began. They included people who had lived in New Jersey for decades, working and raising families and worshiping together on Sundays.

The removals come as immigration officials follow directives of an executive order that Trump signed in January that aims to curb illegal immigration. The order calls for the deportation of nearly anyone here illegally, and not just those who had been convicted of serious crimes.

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As immigration enforcement expands, hundreds of churches are offering sanctuary to immigrants who are undocumented or wanted for visa violations. But this is the first public case in New Jersey this year in which a family has decided to take up the offer.

Immigration agents are barred from conducting enforcement at houses of worship “unless they have prior approval from an appropriate supervisory official or in the event of exigent circumstances,” said Luis Martinez, a spokesman for ICE in Newark.

Martinez declined further comment about this case or about the church’s role in offering sanctuary.

Hoping for a resolution

Kaper-Dale has been leading the fight to allow Indonesian Christians to remain in the United States. Now, he is hoping for a resolution with lawmakers and federal authorities that will spare more of the community members from deportation.

In May, Reps. Frank Pallone, a Democrat from Monmouth County, and Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, introduced a bill that would let certain Indonesian refugees — many of whom escaped religious persecution in their native country — reapply for asylum.

“We are hoping Arthur and Silfia moving to sanctuary today is not a forever situation,” said Kaper-Dale, who is also the Green Party candidate for governor of New Jersey. “We learned through a year of sanctuary that sanctuary is extremely hard. It’s not easy to have any house of worship turn into a spot where you cannot leave.”

“We need to make sure Arthur and Silfia go back to living fully in America and not just in this building,” he added.

Until a resolution is reached, the church remains committed to helping this community and other immigrants who are facing deportation, said the pastor.

“We will offer sanctuary here as long as there are people in the world who fear that there is no refuge in our country,” he said.

Email: adely@northjersey.com