Colorado immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra released from detention, advocates say

DENVER (AP) — A prominent Colorado immigration and labor activist was released Monday after spending nine months in immigration detention, supporters said.

Jeanette Vizguerra left an immigration detention center in suburban Denver a day after a judge ruled she could post a $5,000 bond, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which has been working with Vizguerra’s lawyers and her family.

The group released photos of Vizguerra, a mother of four, standing with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson just outside the gate of the center in Aurora, Colorado.

Vizguerra gained prominence after she took refuge in churches in Colorado to avoid deportation during the first Trump administration. Time magazine named her one of the world’s most influential people in 2017. She was arrested earlier this year in the parking lot of the Denver-area Target store where she worked.

In a statement Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said Vizguerra has received “full due process” and that it would continue to carry out its work.

“We will find, arrest and deport illegal aliens regardless of if they were a featured ‘Time Person of the Year,’” it said.

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 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Vizguerra did not know the number belonged to someone else at the time, the lawsuit 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 continue to be held in a suburban Denver detention facility as her case plays out.

Vizguerra thanked her lawyers, who have been mostly working on her case for free, in a statement released by the American Friends Service Committee.

“They understand that this case is bigger than me. This fight is about the constitutional rights we all share, human rights and dignity for all people,” she said.