New Yorker Pablo Villavicencio was just doing his job when he delivered a pizza to a military base in Brooklyn. Now he may get deported over it.
During a press conference Wednesday, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and City Councilmember Justin Brannan said military officers at Fort Hamilton called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Villavicencio, an undocumented immigrant who was making a pizza delivery and was then targeted over his citizenship status.
No one’s disputing the need to present ID to enter a base, and Brannan said that he understands Villavicencio did that, by showing a municipal ID, an official card that “connects New Yorkers to services, programs, and benefits, regardless of immigration status, homeless status, or gender identity.” In fact, Brannan said, Villavicencio had made several deliveries to the base in the past without any issue.
But Brannan said the trouble started after Villavicencio was allowed onto the base to make the delivery, “because the altercation, the incident, happened inside the base. It didn’t happen at the gate, from what we’re being told .. is this some new policy that we’re unaware of? Something changed here.”
What is known is that Donald Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric has made people who have absolutely nothing do with federal immigration enforcement emboldened, even threatening restaurant employees with deportation for speaking Spanish, and this may be just the latest incident.
Adams said “the arrest of Pablo with a municipal ID is sending shockwaves throughout the immigrant community.” According to NY Mag, an estimated 900,000 New Yorkers have signed up for this free ID, though the program’s “database does not specify immigration status.” Immigrants, regardless of legal status, are already living in fear in this mass deportation era, and this yet another layer:
“It was all right to take his pizza but it was also all right to put him in prison,” Adams added to Brannan’s repeated point: “I don’t know who we can trust anymore.
“We’ve always had a very good relationship with the Fort Hamilton Army Base; they’re a very vital part of our community,” he stressed. “That said, it’s very troubling that we had to learn about this while reading El Diario.”
According to Fort Hamilton, “an individual attempted to gain access to Fort Hamilton to make a delivery without valid Department of Defense identification. The person was directed to the Visitor Control Center to obtain a daily pass. Upon signing a waiver permitting a background check, Department of the Army Access Control standard for all visitors, an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrant was discovered on file.”
ICE told the Brooklyn Reporter that Villavicencio “was granted voluntary departure by an immigration judge in March of 2010 but failed to depart by his July, 2010 deadline. ‘As such, his voluntary departure order became a final order of removal and [he] is an ICE fugitive.’” But, as Brannan said, he had made deliveries there before. Something did indeed change.
”It is absolutely disgusting,” said Murad Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition, “when the strongest military in the world uses it’s power to punch down, by going after pizza delivery workers. Immigrant New Yorkers like Pablo provide for their families by working hard and making sacrifices. They shouldn’t be ripped from their families, their communities, or the country that they now call home.”
Villavicencio is in the process of petitioning for legal status through his wife, but now he could be torn from her and their two young children, both of whom are under the age of four. “There are not words that can describe the drama that my daughters and I are living,” she said. “In one moment, life changed for us. All I ask now is: do not deport my husband. Give him a chance.”