Pablo Villavicencio, the 35-year-old Ecuadorian delivery man who was detained by ICE and jailed in June after delivering a pizza to a Brooklyn Army base, was released from a New Jersey detention center Tuesday night.Villavicencio had a tear-filled reunion with his family around 9 p.m. on the street outside the facility, where he was finally permitted to hug his wife and two daughters after 53 days in detention.
Advertisement
Villavicencio, the father of two U.S. citizens, was delivering pizza to the Fort Hamilton Army base in Brooklyn on June 1, when he was stopped in his tracks by Army security officers who questioned his identification, asking to see more ID than the city-issued IDNYC card he had initially presented.Villavicencio had filed a request for his green card in February and was waiting for a response when he was detained, according to his wife, Sandra Chica, who is also a U.S. citizen.But when asked for additional identification at the Army base, Villavicencio came up short. A guard then prompted Villavicencio to obtain a pass for a proper ID. During the process, Villavicencio signed a waiver for a background check, and an ICE warrant from 2010 came up.The guard who conducted the check first called the NYPD, who noted Villavicencio’s clean record, according to the New York Post. Then the guard called ICE, which sent agents to the base to pick up Villavicencio.The guards kept the pizza.Villavicencio was arrested and transferred to the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey, where he was held for 53 days until a federal judge ordered that he be discharged immediately. At the hearing on Tuesday morning, Judge Paul Crotty openly questioned ICE’s actions, asking, “Is there any concept of justice here?” and, “Is he a threat to the country?” according to the Washington Post.In his order, Judge Crotty said that, aside from the immigration violations, Villavicencio had been a “model citizen.” Crotty also ruled that Villavicencio has the right to obtain a waiver to terminate the 2010 order for removal.Villavicencio, whose story was has been retold and publicized over the past weeks by activists demanding the reunion of immigrants and their families, expressed immense gratitude after his reunion on Tuesday night. “I am well… so happy for my wife, my daughters, my lawyers. Thank you! Thank you for everything,” he told the Post.Cover image: Protesters, with slogans written on pizza delivery boxes, demonstrate outside Federal Court on July 24, 2018, in New York before a deportation hearing for Pablo Villavicencio. Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images.