A lady who gained prominence after she took refuge in church buildings in Colorado to keep away from deportation in the course of the first Trump administration has been detained, immigration advocates stated Tuesday.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon whether or not Jeanette Vizguerra had been taken into custody.
Vizguerra, a mom of 4, was arrested Monday at a Denver-area Goal retailer the place she labored, stated Jordan Garcia of the American Mates Service Committee, who has been involved with Vizguerra’s lawyer and household.
Vizguerra has been making an attempt to realize a visa given to crime victims that permits them to stay in the US since she left sanctuary in church buildings in 2020, Garcia stated.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston blasted the Trump administration for the reported arrest of Vizguerra, an immigration and labor activist.
Johnston, who defended Denver’s sanctuary metropolis insurance policies in Congress earlier this month, referred to as on individuals to demand that ICE launch Vizguerra and provides her due course of rights.
“This is not immigration enforcement intended to keep our country safe. This is Putin-style persecution of political dissidents,” he stated in an announcement.
Information of Vizguerra’s detention prompted a protest outdoors an ICE detention heart within the Denver suburb of Aurora, the place her household stated she is being held.
Buses left the ability within the morning, elevating fears that she could be deported, however her household stated Vizguerra was nonetheless there later within the day.
“We hope ICE will work with her attorney to release her immediately,” the household stated in an announcement included in an replace from the American Mates Service Committee.
Vizguerra’s attorneys stated ICE is making an attempt to take away her based mostly on an order that was by no means legitimate. Petitions difficult her detention have been filed in each Denver’s federal courtroom and the tenth US Circuit Court docket of Appeals.
“If ICE proceeds with trying to remove her without legal authority, it sends a chilling message about the agency’s disregard for due process and the rule of law,” one of many attorneys, Laura Lichter, stated in an announcement.
Vizguerra, who got here to Colorado in 1997 from Mexico Metropolis, has been combating deportation since 2009 after she was pulled over in suburban Denver and located to have a fraudulent Social Safety card along with her personal title and delivery date however another person’s precise quantity, in line with a 2019 lawsuit she introduced in opposition to ICE.
Vizguerra didn’t know the quantity belonged to another person on the time, it stated.
The lawsuit, which she later dropped, alleged that ICE didn’t have a sound order to deport her after she pleaded responsible to 1 misdemeanor rely in that case as a result of it says she voided it by agreeing to self-deport to Mexico.
ICE wrongly tried to revive that order after Vizguerra was arrested for reentering the US later, the lawsuit stated.
She started dwelling in church buildings in 2017 to keep away from being deported beneath the primary Trump administration after a maintain on her deportation was not renewed.
She was given a two-year keep of deportation after two members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, Sen. Michael Bennet and then-Rep. Jared Polis, who’s now Colorado’s governor, launched what are often called non-public payments to present her a path to develop into a everlasting resident.
Such delays have typically been prolonged for years as lawmakers reintroduce the measures geared toward serving to particular person immigrants, however few of the measures ever develop into legislation.
After that keep was not renewed in 2019, Vizguerra once more entered church sanctuary however then left in 2020, in line with a timeline supplied by the American Mates Service Committee.
