“I love you. I see you.” Immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra reaches supporters from inside ICE detention

Luna Baez stood in front of the crowd outside the ICE detention center in Aurora, her phone in her hand, as her mother’s voice came through the line from the other side of the detention center walls. 

“Make sure they hear it, all the way from in here!” detained immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra said Monday night into the phone in Spanish, after calling from inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where she has been locked up for a week. Then her 21-year-old daughter repeated her words in English to the 200 or so people holding vigil outside. 

The people cheered and whooped, some shouting into megaphones. Then they began to chant: “Jeanette, escucha! Estamos en la lucha!” “Listen! We are in the fight!”

Vizguerra, whose supporters believe she was targeted by immigration officials because she has openly criticized President Trump’s policies, has been fighting her own deportation for nearly two decades. Along the way, she became a well-known leader for immigrant rights. Even from inside the detention center, she said she was taking “testimonials” from fellow detainees. 

“This fight is not only for me but for everyone in the detention center,” she said on the phone call. “We need to all take care of each other.

“I love you. I see you,” she said.

Vizguerra, who was picked up during a work break from her job at Target on March 17 and chained around the waist, gained international attention while seeking sanctuary in a Denver church beginning in 2017 to avoid deportation during President Trump’s first term. 

Several people in the crowd had marched alongside Vizguerra before she was surprised by ICE agents who came out of unmarked cars at a Target parking lot. Pam Culig, who carried a sign that said “Down with APD (Aurora police) and their illegal collaboration with ICE,” is a member of the church that gave Vizguerra sanctuary on and off over three years. 

“It’s heartbreaking to think she’s been illegally detained,” said Culig, who played games with Vizguerra’s children when she lived at the church and volunteered as a “door watcher” to see whether authorities were waiting outside. 

The crowd, singing “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” and “We Shall Not Be Moved,” called not only for Vizguerra’s release, but for the federal government to close the detention center and end its contract with the private prison company, GEO Group. The for-profit company, which came under intense scrutiny after a COVID outbreak in 2021 and a chicken pox quarantine in 2018, has operated the immigration detention center since 1986. Vizguerra organized an 89-day camp outside the Aurora detention center in 2020 to protest unhealthy conditions. 

“This place here is pure evil,” said V Reeves, an advocate with Housekeys Action Network in Denver. “Burn it down!”

“They came here excited to be part of our culture, to be part of our lives,” Reeves said, speaking of the detainees. “They didn’t deserve this.” 

Baez said her mother called her from the detention center shortly after her arrest and calmly asked Baez to pick up her younger sister from school. The family had a plan, fearing the day might come. 

“You have to keep a calm head,” said Baez, the second-oldest of Vizguerra’s four daughters. “The most preparing you can do is knowing who your contact points are. As far as emotionally, you are never prepared for that.”

Baez, at her mother’s request, asked the crowd to revive a social media campaign that began in 2017 while Vizguerra was living in the church. She called on them to use #jeanettebelongshere.

How it came to this

Vizguerra, 53, became an activist not only to fight her deportation but for immigrant rights nationwide. Throughout her yearslong fight, she has received support from the faith-based nonprofit American Friends Service Committee, which helped organize the vigil. 

At age 25, Vizguerra crossed the border from Mexico near El Paso, Texas, in 1997, with her husband and one daughter after her husband was threatened at gunpoint in Mexico, she said. She had three more children who were born in the United States, and she is now a grandmother of three.

Vizguerra initially worked as a janitor in office buildings, becoming a member and organizer for SEIU Local 105, where she helped fight for better pay and benefits for custodial workers, according to the American Friends Service Committee. She also joined Rights for All People, and focused on improving relationships between immigrants and law enforcement. 

Vizguerra and her husband started a moving and cleaning company.

In 2009, Vizguerra was pulled over by an Arapahoe County sheriff’s deputy, a traffic stop that resulted in a conviction for “attempted possession of a forged instrument” after authorities determined she had a false Social Security number. The incident resulted in a judge’s order to remove her from the United States, and as she appealed, she became “one of the first individuals in Colorado to publicly share the circumstances of her deportation case,” the nonprofit committee said. 

While her case was still pending in 2012, Vizguerra learned that her mother, whom she had spoken to weekly in the 17 years she had lived in the United States, was dying in Mexico. She flew to Mexico the day after learning the news, but her mother died while she was on the plane. 

The act of leaving the country meant her appeal was forfeited, the nonprofit said. After seven months in Mexico, Vizguerra attempted to return to the United States and was picked up by border patrol agents in April 2013. She pleaded guilty to illegal entry and was sentenced to one year of probation. 

In 2017, after President Trump was elected to his first term, immigration authorities denied Vizguerra’s application for a stay of removal. Instead of reporting to ICE as ordered, she moved into First Unitarian Society Church in Denver because federal immigration agents were prohibited from making arrests inside churches.

Vizguerra lived inside the church for a few months until — as the result of legislation introduced by Democrats Gov. Jared Polis, then a congressman, and Sen. Michael Bennet — she received a two-year stay of removal in March 2017. 

Vizguerra returned to the church two years later, in March 2019, when her stay expired. She left the sanctuary in 2020, the nonprofit committee said. Last month, the Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy that prevented immigration officials from taking enforcement action in places including schools, churches and hospitals.

ICE officials said they detained Vizguerra last week because her previous order to be removed from the country was reinstated. Her attorneys, however, argue that she does not have a final order of removal. 

Immigration authorities have called Vizguerra a “criminal illegal alien” and said she would remain in custody until her removal. A federal judge sided with Vizguerra’s attorneys Friday in saying that ICE cannot deport her while her immigration case is pending. A hearing is scheduled for Friday. 

Congressman Jason Crow, a Democrat whose district includes Aurora, began sending a team to inspect the detention center in 2019 after what he called a “series of disturbing reports’” about medical care and public health.

Crow’s staff was visiting the center weekly, then releasing a report that revealed the number of detainees in the facility and whether any were ill. He has not released a report since Feb. 3, when immigration officials under Trump cut off the team’s access. Crow’s office is working to restore the inspections.