DENVER | 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, including protesters on college campuses, 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.
There is an active legitimate deportation order for this individual. End of discussion. It doesn’t matter whether she is being “targeted” or not. Law enforcement regularly prioritize certain criminals for a variety of reasons. Any legitimate judge would throw this out of court. But many judges today are not impartial or legitimate.
Did she come here illegally? Did she break other laws? Did she receive a deportation order from a judge? It’s time for her to go home.
It’s not really retaliation when she came here illegally and then went out of her way to make herself a public figure. That’s like robbing a bank and then complaining that your property rights were violated when you got arrested.
So perhaps if you know you have a deportation order, and have flouted the immigration laws in the past, flying under the radar for a while would be a good idea?
Friendly reminder that this individual who is in the country illegally also committed identify fraud, and has been actively evading authorities for years. She calls herself an “activist” for “immigrants” meanwhile she is the reason actual legal immigrants are looked down upon.
Wow. The compassion here is…frighteningly missing.
Your pathological altruism in the face of your revolutionary vanguard being deported remains evergreen, however.
The “revolutionary vanguard” is mostly people looking for work and safety.
The simple fact, which you conveniently ignore, is that the Fifth Amendment applies to EVERYONE, not just people you like. That means Due Process of Law. It means hearings, and the right to counsel, and the right to confront their accusers.
And those accusers are quite a pack of loons. Did you know one Venezuelan was scooped off the street because he was wearing a Chicago Bulls cap, and had “tattoos”. (Tattoos are one of the idiotic criteria resorted to by this criminal administration. That the tattoos in this case were NOT “gang tattoos” of any sort mattered not to the brave (and armed) thugs “enforcing” the law by mind reading. It’s not like they have any idea whether the people they kidnap have in fact violated the law.)
As I have also noted before, Trump is relying on a law from 1798 that only applies when the country is at war. Judges have told the administration this, and ordered it to cut the crap, so they simply cram people onto planes, without hearings, and then stick their tongues out at the courts.
This is all illegal, of course. But a criminal president is just fine for the Trumpalos, if it means they can torment their supposed “enemies”.
Nice folks, your bunch.
Go cry to your mama! The only compassion you will find from the left is for poor slobs you can exploit to further your woke socialist revolution. Where was your compassion when the Unitedhealthcare CEO was brutally assassinated by one of your buddies. Instead, there was celebration and dancing in the streets.