US: Military Base Calls ICE Agents to Arrest Pizza Delivery Man

An Ecuadorean-born pizza delivery man is set to be deported from the United States after he tried to deliver a pizza at a Brooklyn military base. 

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The incident occurred last Friday when Pablo Villavicencio, 35, arrived at the Fort Hamilton base in Brooklyn to deliver an order from Nonna Delia's pizzeria, a brick-oven pizza restaurant in Queens where he worked. The guard at the military base asked Villavicencio to show more documents apart from the IDNYC card, which is the official form of identification recognized in New York City.  

"I was delivering food to the military base, and they detained me," Villavicencio told The New York Post from an ICE detention center Wednesday, over the phone, where he is currently being held pending deportation.   

"I have been there before and always go in and never have had any problems. They actually know me, and the sergeant knows me for some time doing delivery," he added. 

"Villavicencio-Calderon was detained by military police officers and turned over to ICE," Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow, said in a statement.  

Yong Yow added that in March 2010 Villavicencio was granted voluntary departure by an immigration judge but failed to depart by July, as ordered. 
"As such, his voluntary departure order became a final order of removal," she said in a statement. 

Originally from Ecuador, Pablo Villavicencio is married to a US citizen with two daughters.  His wife, Sandra Chica was born in Colombia and moved to the U.S. nearly a decade ago, told the New York Times, she is a U.S. citizen. The couple has two daughters, who are three and two years old and were born in the U.S. 

He has shown his New York City identification card to the guard several times before, but it wasn't enough this time, his wife reiterated, the Daily Mail reported.

"This is inhuman," Chica told the New York Times. "He was not committing any crime. He is a father who is working for his daughters. Every day our daughters ask me why their dad is not coming home." 

"It’s cruel that they’re going to separate my daughters from him," Chica added. "He’s supporting the family, and now I’m going to be by myself with them." 

 A family friend has opened a Go-Fund Page to help the family members cope.  

Fort Hamilton said in a statement that Villavicencio was an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador who didn't have a "valid Department of Defense identification" and needed to get a  daily visitors pass, the CNN reported.