Jonny previously
reported that Pablo Airaldi, resident of Bed-Stuy's Chicken Coop, bike messenger, and co-founder of
Greenpoint Bikes, was held in immigrant detention and facing deportation over a ten-year-old suspended sentence. (He came to America from Uruguay with his mother when he was seven, and became a legal permanent resident; as a teenager in Indiana, he plead guilty to transporting stolen auto parts.) On Thursday—the day after a
Village Voice cover story highlighted his plight, and the efforts of his friends to raise the money to get him out of detention—he was
freed, and the threat of deportation lifted, after the Indiana judge who sentenced him years ago was persuaded to amend Airaldi's years-old sentence to 364 days (legal permanent residents can be deported if sentenced to terms of a year or more). So, congratulations, bike-racing fundraisers.
