Two days after detaining a well-known Denver immigrant rights activist, federal officials responded to public outcry by calling Jeanette Vizguerra a “convicted criminal alien” and laying out her 16-year legal saga to attempt to stay in the country.
Vizguerra, who spent three years living in a Denver church to avoid deportation, was arrested Monday while on a break from her job at a Target. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were quiet about the arrest until Wednesday, when they said Vizguerra was picked up “without incident” and “will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the United States.”
Vizguerra, 53, entered the United States illegally in El Paso, Texas, in 1997, according to federal officials. In 2009, she was pulled over in Arapahoe County and authorities found that she had used documents that included a false Social Security number. The mother of four, including three children born in the United States, has been fighting deportation efforts ever since.
“Vizguerra is a convicted criminal alien from Mexico who has a final order of deportation issued by a federal immigration judge,” ICE said in a news release, its first comment on the detention that stirred anger and panic within the immigration community. “She illegally entered the United States near El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 24, 1997, and has received legal due process in U.S. immigration court.”
News of Vizguerra’s detention set off a firestorm of comments from Democrats, including Gov. Jared Polis and members of Congress. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston called it a “Putin-style persecution of political dissidents.”
After Vizguerra’s arrest by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office in 2009, she was picked up by ICE on an immigration detainer. She was released on bond after two weeks in detention, and later convicted in Arapahoe County of driving without a license and not having insurance.
A year and a half later, in 2011, a federal immigration judge denied her application to remain in the country, but agreed to a “voluntary departure,” meaning she agreed to leave the United States, according to ICE.
But Vizguerra did not leave then. In 2012, she returned to Mexico because her mother died. She was picked up by Border Patrol agents in 2013 as she tried to return to her family in the United States, crossing the border in Candelaria, Texas, according to ICE. Entering the U.S. illegally after a judge has ordered removal from the country is a felony, but Vizguerra ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to one year of probation.
The previous order that she be removed from the country was reinstated, however.
Vizguerra was granted a stay of deportation until 2015, and when the application for another stay was denied in 2017, she took sanctuary in First Unitarian Society Church in Denver instead of reporting, as ordered, to ICE.
She was denied applications to stay in the U.S. multiple times from 2019 to 2021, until she was eventually given a one-year stay of deportation, which was renewed.
Vizguerra’s last stay of deportation expired in February 2024, ICE said, leading to her arrest Monday.
Vizguerra’s time in the church, where federal agents were prohibited from arresting her, garnered international attention. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2017, and in the past few months, has spoken out in the media against President Trump’s immigration policies.
Vizguerra is being held at the ICE detention center in Aurora, where family and friends were keeping vigil outside. Her attorneys sued federal officials in U.S. District Court in Denver this week, arguing that Vizguerra should be released from detention and deserves a hearing before she is deported.
Jeanette Vizguerra, a Mexican immigrant who once lived in a church to avoid immigration, smiles after leaving the church early Friday, May 12, 2017, in downtown Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)Vizguerra’s detention comes after at least two other high-profile immigrant activists or university leaders were taken into ICE custody, including Brown University professor Rasha Alawieh and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil.
It also follows the Trump administration’s attempts to deport immigrants without hearings or other usual protections, including invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime measure that allows the country broader authority to conduct mass deportations. The administration claimed the United States is at war with the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. The move was struck down by a federal judge Saturday.
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