The attorneys for Colorado activist Jeanette Vizguerra are going toe to toe with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the legalities of her case after her detainment by federal law enforcement this week.
ICE contended in a statement Wednesday that a final order of deportation permits Vizguerra’s detention, while the Denver law office Lichter Immigration counters that any cited removal order is invalid.
Vizguerra built her reputation as an advocate for immigrants during President Donald Trump’s first term, when she took sanctuary at two Denver churches to avoid deportation beginning in 2017. News of her detainment on Monday enraged many community leaders and elected officials, with protests taking place on Tuesday outside the Aurora ICE detention center where she’s being held.
Gov. Jared Polis pushed ICE to focus on “violent offenders,” and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston harshly criticized the agency’s move to detain Vizguerra.
ICE confirmed on Wednesday morning that Vizguerra, 53, who’s referred to as Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez in legal filings, was arrested on Monday and is in the agency’s custody pending her removal from the country. ICE said a federal immigration judge issued her final order of deportation, and her latest one-year stay of deportation expired in February 2024. It referred to her as “a convicted criminal alien.”
“She illegally entered the United States near El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 24, 1997, and has received legal due process in U.S. immigration court,” the agency’s statement says.
ICE also shared a photo of Vizguerra with a chain wrapped around her after being detained.
On Tuesday, Vizguerra’s lawyers filed an emergency petition for writ of habeas corpus — a request for a court to determine the validity of a person’s detention — in Colorado’s federal district court. They also filed a petition for review in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to challenge ICE’s move.
According to a copy of the petition for writ of habeas corpus obtained by The Denver Post, Vizguerra’s attorneys named Aurora ICE processing center warden Johnny Choate, ICE acting field office director Ernesto Santacruz, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
The lawyers argue that ICE lacks the legal justification for Vizguerra’s latest detainment because any alleged reinstated order is “deficient.”
Vizguerra’s legal team says ICE is using a reinstated order “rife with procedural flaws” from 2013. Lichter Immigration says Vizguerra was granted voluntary departure from the U.S. by an immigration judge in 2011 — thus, not needing a removal order — and she appealed it. The lawyers say that when she left the country to visit her mother in Mexico, the move meant her appeal was withdrawn, and the voluntary departure period was reinstated.
The next year, when Vizguerra was back in the U.S., her legal team said ICE issued a reinstatement order, but it didn’t follow the standard of telling her about her right to challenge it. Lichter Immigration said she declined to sign the order and the error was never fixed on ICE’s end, and then she was released.
“ICE is attempting to remove her based on an order that was never valid to begin with — factually incorrect and procedurally defective from the start,” said lead attorney Laura Lichter in a statement late Tuesday. “No lawful removal order exists, and ICE would have known this for years.”
Jordan Garcia, a program director at the American Friends Service Committee — a Quaker social justice group working closely with Vizguerra’s family — provided details on how she was detained on Monday. While she was working at Target, a colleague of hers saw federal agents following Vizguerra around the store, he said in a Wednesday interview.
When she exited the building for her first break, Garcia said, she was detained outside.
“From what I understand from her daughters, (agents) mocked her and were very disrespectful,” Garcia said, “kind of alluding to like: ‘We finally got you.’ ”
The criminal conviction referred to by ICE dates to 2009, when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of possession of a forged instrument, related to police’s discovery of a fake social security number during a traffic stop.
Supporters of Vizguerra — who was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2017 — continue to speak out statewide and around the country.
“Jeanette Vizguerra’s detention is nothing short of an assault on the fundamental rights of every immigrant in this country,” said Roman Palomares, national president and chairman of the board at the League of United Latin American Citizens. “It is a chilling reminder that those who dare to stand up for justice are being targeted and silenced.”