AURORA, Colo. — Jeanette Vizguerra, a Colorado immigrant rights activist who was held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for more than nine months, will spend Christmas with her family after walking out of a detention facility in Aurora Monday, according to a statement from the American Friends Service Committee.
Vizguerra’s family posted the $5,000 bond required for her release after an immigration judge ruled Sunday she could walk out without being monitored after finding she posed no flight risk or danger to the community, according to our partners at The Denver Post.
The family posted the bond with support from the Immigrant Freedom Fund, according to the American Friends Service Committee.
Vizguerra will speak to the community at a “celebration rally” on Tuesday at noon outside the Alfred A. Arraj Courthouse in Denver, her supporters said in a Facebook post.
In a statement later Monday, Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat who in August introduced a bill to give the Mexican national permanent resident status, said Vizguerra's release "shows what happens when courts enforce Constitutional protections and justice prevails against the Trump administration’s cruel immigration agenda."
Vizguerra gained prominence when she was forced to seek sanctuary at a Denver church in 2017 under the first Trump administration after a hold on her deportation was not renewed. Denver7 spoke with her more than two months into her stay at First Unitarian Church in 2017 — the same year she was named to TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world alongside President Trump.
She was given a two-year reprieve, which allowed her to stay in the country until March of 2019 after Sen. Michael Bennet and then-Rep. Jared Polis — now Colorado’s governor — introduced so-called private bills to give her a path to become a permanent resident. But her two-year stay was not renewed and Vizguerra was further denied a U Visa — which allows undocumented victims of certain crimes to live legally in the U.S.
A timeline provided by ICE showed Vizguerra was twice granted a stay of deportation in both 2021 and 2023, each lasting for a year. She was arrested in the parking lot of an Aurora Target store where she worked on March 17.
Vizguerra, who came to Colorado in 1997 from Mexico City, has been fighting deportation since 2009 after she was pulled over and found to have a fraudulent Social Security card with her own name and birth date but someone else’s actual number, according to a 2019 lawsuit she brought against ICE. Vizguerra did not know the number belonged to someone else at the time, it said.
Vizguerra’s lawyers have said ICE was attempting to deport her based on an order that was never valid and challenged her detention in federal court.
- Denver7's Micah Smith took an unflinching look at the immigration process in Colorado, which you can view in the video player below:
In the past, a senior official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told Denver7 that Vizguerra has a final order of deportation issued by a federal immigration judge. Vizguerra's legal team disputes that.
An ICE spokesperson has also previously told Denver7 that Vizguerra has received legal due process in immigration court throughout the process.
In a statement obtained by Denver7 Tuesday morning, a DHS/ICE spokesperson said Vizguerra "is a convicted criminal alien from Mexico who has a final order of deportation issued by a federal immigration judge. Her criminal history includes document forgery, driving without a license, and illegal re-entry... Now, an activist judge has made her eligible to be realeased on bond."
"We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country," the spokesperson added.
Editor's note on Dec. 23 at 10:45 a.m.: This story has been updated to include a statement from DHS/ICE following her release from the GEO facility in Aurora.
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