A Manhattan federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama halted the deportation of an illegal immigrant pizza deliveryman in New York on Saturday.
New York Federal District Court Judge Alison J. Nathan ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Pablo Villavicencio Calderon, after lawyers for the Ecuadorean national filed an emergency petition on his behalf, the New York Times reported.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials took Villavicencio into custody after the 35-year-old illegal alien failed to produce a legal driver’s license to enter a military base where he was trying to deliver pizza.
Villavicencio, who is married and has two daughters who are U.S. citizens, agreed in 2010 to voluntarily depart the country after an immigration judge ordered him to depart the U.S.
Villavicencio never left the country after the judge’s ruling in 2010.
Nathan, whom Obama appointed in 2001, had a long history of working with Obama and other Democratic candidates before being appointed as a federal judge.
According to Nathan’s faculty page on New York University Law School’s website, she worked as an Associate National Counsel for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and then served as “voter protection coordinator” and adviser for the Obama campaign when he ran for office in 2008.
In 2009, after Obama became president, he hired Nathan as a special assistant to the president in the White House and then as an associate White House counsel.
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