VICTOR MARTINEZ IS FREE!! PHOTOS AFTER RELEASE!
His incarceration at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, NJ came to an end after over seven months sitting in limbo awaiting his fate in front of a U.S. Immigration judge.
Martinez's nightmare began, ironically enough, immediately after one of his greatest triumphs. After a season where he had been disappointed to take third place at the Arnold Classic and then fourth at both the Mr. Olympia and the Sheru Classic, Victor traveled to Madrid, Spain and became the first-ever Arnold Classic Europe Champion on October 8, 2011.
His celebration was to be quite short-lived. Upon his return home, Victor was detained at JFK International Airport and taken into custody. His green card as a resident legal alien had expired some time before, and had been denied renewal. Martinez knew it was only a matter of time before his case came up for review and he would be taken to a correctional facility, but of course he could never have known it would happen so closely on the heels of one of his career highlights as an IFBB Pro.
"I should have known," he told me shortly after arriving at Hudson County. "My life is a roller coaster - something good happens, then something bad, over and over again."
With access to neither weights or quality food behind bars, Victor has watched his mighty physique scale down to more average proportions. His own estimate is that he's dropped about 60 pounds of muscle in the seven months in lockup.
His incarceration at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, NJ came to an end after over seven months sitting in limbo awaiting his fate in front of a U.S. Immigration judge.
Martinez's nightmare began, ironically enough, immediately after one of his greatest triumphs. After a season where he had been disappointed to take third place at the Arnold Classic and then fourth at both the Mr. Olympia and the Sheru Classic, Victor traveled to Madrid, Spain and became the first-ever Arnold Classic Europe Champion on October 8, 2011.
His celebration was to be quite short-lived. Upon his return home, Victor was detained at JFK International Airport and taken into custody. His green card as a resident legal alien had expired some time before, and had been denied renewal. Martinez knew it was only a matter of time before his case came up for review and he would be taken to a correctional facility, but of course he could never have known it would happen so closely on the heels of one of his career highlights as an IFBB Pro.
"I should have known," he told me shortly after arriving at Hudson County. "My life is a roller coaster - something good happens, then something bad, over and over again."
With access to neither weights or quality food behind bars, Victor has watched his mighty physique scale down to more average proportions. His own estimate is that he's dropped about 60 pounds of muscle in the seven months in lockup.
