Immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez was released from ICE detention Monday, nine months after she was taken by immigration authorities on her work break from a Target store.
“I need to return home, not only for my family and my grandchildren, but also for my community, which needs me,” Vizguerra said in an emailed statement before her release. “They need a strong, solid leader to guide them, to direct them, to show them how we must continue this fight. I said it in the past, and I say it now: they will not silence me. No matter where I am, I will continue to defend my values and my community.”
Immigration Judge Brea Burgie granted Vizguerra a $5,000 bond Sunday after hearing from Vizguerra’s legal team and a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Immigrant Freedom Fund helped her pay the bond and she was released by Monday afternoon, hugging her family outside the detention center in Aurora.
Vizguerra’s supporters, who held a vigil outside the facility every week for the past nine months, said she would hold a community rally Tuesday outside the federal courthouse in downtown Denver.
The mother and grandmother is a nationally known activist who was marching against the Trump administration the day before she was detained by ICE.
Friday’s immigration hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang, who said in a Dec. 17 ruling that federal immigration officials would have to 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 was picked up during a work break March 17 and chained around the waist, gained international attention while seeking sanctuary in a Denver church in 2017 to avoid deportation during President Trump’s first term. In 2017, Vizguerra was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
She has lived in the United States since 1997, after crossing the border illegally, and has been fighting government efforts to deport her off and on since 2009.
Her fight to avoid deportation could continue for years.
“We will continue to stand with Jeanette and against any administration that tries to jail and deport our communities and families,” Jordan Garcia, co-director of the American Friends Service Committee in Colorado, said in an email after her release. “Jeanette – and many others – have been deprived of their freedom for the simple act of speaking truth to power. But their attempts to silence us did not and will not succeed.”
At age 25, Vizguerra crossed the border from Mexico near El Paso, Texas, 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 said she used 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,” according to the faith-based nonprofit American Friends Service Committee.
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.
Immigration authorities have called Vizguerra a “criminal illegal alien” and have argued that she should remain in custody until her removal from the country.