Judge questions state of justice for pizza-worker immigrant Pablo Villavicencio
A federal judge asked Tuesday if the U.S. government has “any concept of justice” in mind as he questioned the need to deport an Ecuadorean immigrant detained while delivering pizza to a Brooklyn Army installation and now kept apart from his American wife and two young children.
Judge Paul A. Crotty put a government lawyer on the spot as he heard legal arguments over whether a court in New Jersey or New York should help decide the fate of Pablo Villavicencio, who failed to obey a 2010 deportation order before marrying a U.S. citizen and making a life in America.
He did not immediately rule, but he questioned the motivations behind the government’s decisions to put Villavicencio, 35, on the brink of expulsion.