Nine months after ICE picked her up on her lunch break outside a Target store, immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez went before an immigration judge Friday to plead for her release from the Aurora detention center.
Immigration Judge Brea Burgie did not immediately rule on Vizguerra’s request, saying the case was complex and she had just learned it was assigned to her. Burgie said she would decide in writing “as soon as I possibly can.”
Vizguerra’s daughters, who had hoped the hearing would result in their mother’s release either Friday afternoon or by Monday, cried and hugged her in the hallway outside the detention center courtroom, until a guard told them they could not touch each other.
The immigration hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang, who said in a ruling this week that federal immigration officials must prove that Vizguerra is a flight risk or a danger to the community if they want to continue holding her in the detention center.
Vizguerra, who once took refuge in a Denver church to avoid deportation and in 2017 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, asked for the bond hearing after she had been held for more than 180 days.
The attorney for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Shana Martin, argued that Vizguerra “shows a lack of respect for the court” and has a history of violating the law. She has been convicted of driving without a license, driving without insurance and twice had fraudulent Social Security cards that she used to get jobs and buy a home, Martin said.
Vizguerra’s attorney, Laura Lichter, countered that Vizguerra’s alleged crimes were the result of her trying to support her family as an immigrant, calling them “common status-related necessities for someone who works to support their family.” Vizguerra served 23 days in jail after she was pulled over on a traffic violation and found with fraudulent documents in 2009.
Lichter said it was “ludicrous” to say Vizguerra was a flight risk since she has lived in this country for 28 years and has four daughters here. She was detained by ICE, and held for the past nine months without a bond hearing, because the Trump administration doesn’t like her activism, Lichter said.
One of Vizguerra’s daughters recently joined the Air Force and applied for a form of legal status on behalf of her mother that is for relatives of people serving in the military, but the government attorney at Friday’s hearing said that request was denied.
“What the government has shown is that they don’t like Ms. Vizguerra,” Lichter said.
The day before she was taken by ICE agents in a Target parking lot, Vizguerra was marching with other activists in protest of federal immigration policies. Several of Vizguerra’s supporters, who have held vigils every week outside the immigration detention center, were gathered outside during the hearing.
Journalists were initially blocked from entering the courtroom by officials with GEO Group, the private company that runs the detention center. The officials said they were given verbal orders from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that no one aside from Vizguerra’s family, legal team and witnesses could enter the courtroom.
Five reporters, from The Colorado Sun, Colorado Public Radio, CBS Colorado, The Denver Post and Colorado Newsline, were told the courtroom was too full when they attempted to pass through security into the detention center.
One journalist who took a photo in the lobby of the facility, where use of phones is banned by visitors, was ordered to leave, and detention center officials threatened to call Aurora police.
The situation led to several heated discussions in the lobby between detention center officials and Vizguerra’s lawyer, who argued that courtrooms are public spaces under the First Amendment. After two hours, journalists and a few community supporters were let into the hearing. The reversal followed calls by Vizguerra’s attorney to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and intervention by Judge Burgie, who works for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, part of the justice department.
“We had done everything in our power to make sure that everybody had access to this hearing,” Burgie said as the hearing began.
A few of the community members allowed into the hearing were members of First Unitarian, the church that provided sanctuary for Vizguerra during the first Trump administration.
Arnie Carter helped guard the door of the church, which was watched 24/7 in case ICE tried to arrest Vizguerra, he said. Kathy Glatz organized a carpool to get Vizguerra’s daughters to school. When Vizguerra was named Time’s person of the year, the church put on a gala and got Vizguerra a fancy dress, since she couldn’t leave sanctuary to attend the actual party.
“We shouldn’t have to be going through this, so I’m angry,” Carter said while waiting to enter the courtroom. “Jeanette’s liberation has come to be a symbol of all of our liberation. Oppression and authoritarianism are affecting everybody’s lives, especially immigrants and Black and brown people.”
Vizguerra has been locked up by ICE since she was taken into custody March 17. Federal authorities had said they planned to deport her to Mexico, but Vizguerra’s attorneys won a court ruling to temporarily block deportation until Vizguerra could have her case heard in court.
Vizguerra entered the U.S. 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.