Colorado immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra can be released on bond, advocates say

DENVER (AP) — Supporters of a prominent Colorado immigration and labor activist say an immigration judge has ruled that she can post bond and be released after spending nine months in detention.

The judge issued a written ruling Sunday allowing Jeanette Vizguerra to post $5,000 bond, said Jennifer Piper of the American Friends Service Committee, who has been working with Vizguerra’s lawyers and her family. Vizguerra’s family and a nonprofit group that helps pay bonds for people in immigration detention were working Monday to post the bond, which can take a day or more to process, she said.

Emails seeking comment from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security were not immediately returned.

Vizguerra gained prominence after she took refuge in churches in Colorado to avoid deportation during the first Trump administration. She was arrested in the parking lot of the Denver-area Target store where she worked on March 17.

Vizguerra, who came to Colorado in 1997 from Mexico City, has been fighting deportation since 2009 after she was pulled over in suburban Denver and found to have a fraudulent Social Security card with her own name and birth date but someone else’s actual number, according to a 2019 lawsuit she brought against ICE. Vizguerra did not know the number belonged to someone else at the time, it said.

Vizguerra’s lawyers have said ICE was attempting to deport her based on an order that was never valid and challenged her detention in federal court.

A federal judge recently ordered that a bond hearing be held in immigration court to determine whether Vizguerra should be continue to be held in detention facility in suburban Denver as her immigration case plays out.