A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the immediate release of an undocumented Ecuadorean immigrant who was arrested in June and later detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility after he delivered pizza to a U.S. Army base in Brooklyn, New York.

Pablo Villavicencio Calderon was being held for deportation at a New Jersey facility before Judge Paul Crotty ordered the government to “immediately release [Calderon] from custody because removal is no longer reasonably foreseeable.”

According to The New York Post, Villavicencio Calderon entered Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton military base on a food delivery run early last month using his city-issued identification card. After he entered the base, a guard asked him for another form of identification and called ICE when Villavicencio Calderon couldn’t produce anything.

“There was a different security guard and he told me I needed to go get another pass to enter… A tall man with dark skin started to ask me many questions, he asked me about why I didn’t have any Social Security card,” he told the Post last month.


“He called the NYPD and the NYPD told him I didn’t have any record, that I was clean. But the man said, ‘I don’t care.’ He said I need to keep waiting and he called ICE,” Villavicencio Calderon added.

According to the court order, Villavicencio Calderon entered the United States in 2008 and though he agreed, at an immigration proceeding, to leave the country in 2010, he remained in the country. Villavicencio Calderon married a U.S. citizen and has two children. He was also in the process of obtaining legal permanent resident status, when the ICE arrest set him back.

“He has no criminal history. He has paid his taxes. And he has worked diligently to provide for his family,” the order reads.