Advocates for illegal aliens have rushed to defend Pablo Villavicencio, an illegal alien with a wife and two children who detained on an outstanding deportation order while delivering pizza to a New York military base last Wednesday.
The publicity campaign has made much of the story and less of the facts. Before he was married or fathered two children, the Ecuadoran native illegally entered the U.S. When ordered to leave, he told a judge in 2010 that he would voluntarily return home. He did not and has been in violation of that agreement for the last eight years.
Those facts came out of the shadows last week when he tried to deliver pizza and was asked by guards at Fort Hamilton for identification. Like all other visitors to the Army base, he was required to present government-issued, legal identification
The 35-year-old illegal alien presented his IDNYC card, which is a municipal identification card that can be used at city agencies, museums or libraries. Often used by illegal immigrants, it does not authorize cardholders to drive, to work in New York, and cannot be used to enter facilities, like the base, that require government-issued IDs. In order to get a pass to enter the military base, Villavicencio knowingly and willingly signed a waiver permitting base guards to run a background check.
Because of Villavicencio’s decisions, the guard fulfilled his duty to contact officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and, as a consequence discovered that the individual seeking to enter the military base had an outstanding warrant.
Radical politicians and interest groups ignored Villavicencio’s multiple violations of law in their haste to grab political ground.
“[New York] Governor [Andrew] Cuomo must immediately issue an executive order granting access to driver’s licenses for all New Yorkers,” said Democratic gubernatorial candidate and actress Cynthia Nixon.
For his part, Cuomo railed against the arrest as “an assault on New York’s immigrant families,” before offering to spend taxpayer dollars to represent Villavicencio.
With no valid license, nor insurance, Villavicencio was breaking multiple laws. His employer also was violating federal law by hiring illegal aliens to make deliveries. And both were endangering the lives of every other driver on the road. The real tragedy of this story is that Villavicencio’s boosters fail to see that fact.