ICE detains Colorado immigrant rights activist whose efforts to avoid deportation by hiding in church made headlines
Jeanette Vizguerra is being held at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora, the American Friends Service Committee said in a news release announcing her arrest
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Federal immigration authorities on Monday detained Jeanette Vizguerra, a Colorado immigrants rights activist whose efforts to avoid deportation over the past decade made national headlines.
The American Friends Service Committee said in a news release announcing her arrest that Vizguerra is being held at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora, which is operated by the GEO Group, a private prison contractor.
A GoFundMe organized by Vizguerra’s family said she was detained outside of her job at a Target.
“My mom has fought relentlessly for her community and it is time for all of us to now come together and show all the support for her like she has done to us,” one of her daughters wrote on the GoFundMe.
Vizguerra was first targeted for deportation in 2009 after being pulled over in Arapahoe County. She returned to Mexico voluntarily in 2012 to visit her dying mother, returning to the U.S. in 2013.
She has spent the time since fighting her deportation order, entering into sanctuary at a Denver church in 2017 during the first Trump administration to avoid being removed from the country. Colorado’s Democratic members of Congress introduced legislation to prevent her from being targeted by immigration agents, which resulted in a two-year reprieve.
That reprieve ended in 2019 and wasn’t renewed. She returned to sanctuary and left in 2020.
The timeline is according to AFSC, which has played a central role in Vizguerra’s case. Vizguerra has been featured in many local and national news articles.
Vizguerra was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2017.
Vizguerra first entered the U.S. unlawfully from Mexico in 1997 after, according to AFSC, her husband was threatened at gunpoint.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
