DENVER (AP) — A lawyer for a prominent immigration activist arrested this month told a judge Friday that authorities appear to be retaliating against Jeanette Vizguerra years after she took refuge in Denver churches to avoid deportation during the first Trump administration.
Vizguerra was arrested in the parking lot of the Denver-area Target store where she worked on March 17.
“We finally got you,” agents told Vizguerra, according to her attorney, Laura Lichter.
Lichter told U.S. District Judge Nina Wang that she suspects Vizguerra was being targeted because she was exercising her First Amendment right to speech. Lichter cited unspecified media and social media reports as evidence of retaliation.
Lichter declined to elaborate on what speech she believed Vizguerra was being targeted for, but drew a connection between her detention and the detention of others, , who have been detained by immigration authorities recently.
“I believe that the targeting here of Jeanette is in line with what we are seeing in other types of cases where people are being targeted for showing up at protests, for posting certain messages on social media, for having a particular opinion,” Lichter said.
Lawyers had been set to argue over whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could continue holding Vizguerra in detention in suburban Denver. Lawyers say she is being held on an invalid deportation order from 2013.
But Wang delayed those arguments after Vizguerra's lawyers said they would change their legal challenge to also claim that her First Amendment rights were being violated.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Jafek said the government did not object to the change but did not respond to the retaliation allegation in court.
ICE says Vizguerra entered the U.S. from Mexico illegally in 1997 and is being held pending deportation. In a statement shortly after her arrest, ICE said the mother of four has a final deportation order and “has received legal due process in U.S. immigration court.”
As they have done with other arrests recently, agency officials posted a photo on social media of Vizguerra being taken into custody with her hands behind her back and a chain around her waist.
Wang issued an order halting Vizguerra's deportation while the legal challenge plays out. She has noted the case raises “complex issues” about immigration law and she could not find a similar case.
ICE began trying to deport Vizguerra in 2009 during the Obama administration 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 number, according to a 2019 lawsuit she brought against ICE. Vizguerra did not know the number belonged to someone else at the time, the lawsuit said.
While a judge issued an order of removal against her, she also was given the option to leave the country voluntarily, which she ultimately did to try to see her mother before she died in 2012, her lawyers said in the current petition before Wang.
ICE wrongfully reissued a deportation order for her in 2013 and did not provide proper notice to Vizguerra, the petition says.
While Vizguerra has received multiple deportation delays in the past, her last stay expired over a year ago in February 2024, lawyers for the government said in a response to her petition. Until now, they say Vizguerra has never challenged the deportation order with the federal appeals court, which they say is the court that should decide whether it is valid.
