Mexican immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra earned a spot as one of 2017’s most influential people after resisting deportation during President Donald Trump’s first administration. Her recent detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is causing a stir among Colorado politicians and activists.
Vizguerra is one of several high-profile arrests to come out of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Last week, a Brown University professor was deported after Homeland Security officials alleged she attended the funeral of a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon. Earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who led campus protests at Columbia University against Israel’s actions in Gaza, was detained by immigration agents.
A ‘bold and risky’ history of advocacy
Nearly 20 years ago, in 1997, Vizguerra fled from Mexico with her husband, a bus driver who was held up at gunpoint multiple times, according to a 2011 documentary about their ordeal. She drew national attention in 2017 when she sought refuge in a Colorado church basement with her children, “hoping that the sanctuary of a house of worship would protect her” from the president’s deportation plans during his first administration, said The New York Times. Her act of resistance landed her a spot on Time Magazine’s TIME100 list that year, alongside Colin Kaepernick, Jeff Bezos, Vladimir Putin and Trump.
Before she began hiding out in the church, Vizguerra was a janitor, working as an “outspoken union organizer” and “building her own company before becoming an advocate for immigration reform — a bold and risky thing for an undocumented immigrant,” actor America Ferrera said in her TIME100 profile. Since taking refuge in the church, she has continued to be a vocal advocate against detention and deportation in Colorado, including protesting outside the Aurora detention center. Since she left the sanctuary of the churches in 2020, she has been trying to earn a visa given to victims of a crime that would allow her to remain in America.
Vizguerra was arrested Monday at a Denver-area Target where she worked, said Jordan Garcia of the American Friends Service Committee, who has been in contact with Vizguerra’s lawyer and family. She was taking her break when she was taken into custody by immigration agents. Based on details of the arrest Vizguerra shared with family, Garcia said one of the agents told her, “We finally got you.” She is now being held at a detention facility in Aurora, her attorney Laura Lichter said to CNN.
A ‘Putin-style persecution’
News of Vizguerra’s arrest was “greeted with glee by those supporting Trump’s harsh crackdown,” CNN said. “Finally!” John Fabbricatore, a former ICE field director, said in a post on X. He claimed the Biden administration kept him from deporting Vizguerra four years ago, and called her a “criminal” who “hates Trump and is an open-borders, abolish-ICE advocate.”
Her detention “stirred a backlash from Colorado Democratic politicians and immigrant-rights supporters” who “accused the Trump administration of trying to silence critics of its immigration crackdown,” said the Times. Denver’s Mayor Mike Johnston condemned her arrest as a “Putin-style persecution of political dissidents” in a statement. He does not see this as a case of “immigration enforcement.” Instead, it is about “targeting political opponents and using the force of your government to punish them.”
There are “serious concerns” about ICE’s actions during this arrest, Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) said in an X post. Targeting a “mother who has been an active part of our Colorado community for nearly three decades” will not “fix our broken immigration system or secure our border.”