Eateries Won't Deliver To Brooklyn Army Base After ICE Arrest

BROOKLYN, NY — Local eateries refuse to bring food to a Brooklyn army base after a military guard called ICE to arrest a pizza delivery man last week, reports said.

Restaurant owners told the New York Post and the New York Daily News that workers are afraid to deliver to the Fort Hamilton Army Base because of Pablo Villavicencio's detention by ICE, with some shops outright refusing to go there.

"I won’t send my guys there anymore," Josefina Cardoso, owner of the taco spot El Puente, told the Post. "I would feel guilty if something happened."

A worker for the online ordering system for restaurants, Orders2.me told the Pluralist that owners and managers of restaurants near the base called the company to cancel future delivers to the spot.

"I can say that we have received several calls... with request to... remove the Fort Hamilton Army Base from their delivery zones," Orders2.me worker Rafi Cohen told the Pluralist. "They will no longer be delivering food there."

The delivery cut off to the base comes days after Villavicencio, 35, was arrested by ICE after he brought a pizza to somebody in the base.

When Villavicencio, an Ecuadorian citizen, used a municipal ID to get into the base, a guard asked the husband and father of two about his immigration status. ICE agents took Villavicencio to a detention center in New Jersey to await deportation because immigration officials argued that he was a fugitive after a judge ordered him to leave the country voluntarily in 2010.

Elected officials, advocates and residents rallied around Villavicencio and a judge granted him an emergency stay over the weekend.

"Detaining a hardworking man, separating a father from his children and tearing apart families doesn't make America safe," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.

Since the Villavicencio's detention, restaurant owners have been afraid to send orders to the base and the ones that will told their workers not to enter the base itself.

"Our guys are not allowed in there at all," Julianna Oliverio, a cashier at the Goustaro deli, told the Daily News. "We don’t tell our guys to go in there. Have them meet them at the gate."

Even before the arrest, delivery drivers have long complained to managers that they've felt targeted with exhaustive searches by guards as they try to bring food to the base, the Brooklyn Paper reported.

"They always give the delivery guys a problem — it’s the same kids who deliver every day, but they still give them a hard time," Brittany Ryan, a waitress at Campania pizzeria, told the paper. "Mostly they do it to the Arab kids, and most of them don’t like to go to the base because of that."

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