Attorneys for Denver immigrant-rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra filed a renewed motion seeking her release from detention Monday, arguing that her six-month imprisonment was so prolonged that it violated her constitutional rights.
“For the first time, I feel vulnerable,” Vizguerra told advocates, supporters and reporters through a video call from within Aurora’s immigrant detention center. Miriam Ordoñez, the immigrant rights coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, translated for the group, which gathered outside the detention center. “I feel my health is deteriorating. I am extremely worried for my family. I need to be out with them, and I need to be out with my community.”
Vizguerra, a longtime Denver resident and activist, has been held at the facility with as many as 1,180 other immigrants since mid-March, when Vizguerra was arrested outside of the Target store where she worked. Her arrest and pending deportation proceedings sparked condemnation from activists and elected officials, including Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who likened it to “Putin-style persecution.”
A coalition of attorneys has been working to end Vizguerra’s detention in the six months since her arrest. They filed a new motion Monday asking a federal judge to either release her or to give her a bail hearing to seek temporary release. They argued Vizguerra cannot be indefinitely detained while her broader immigration case plays out in court.
“Immigrants in these kinds of cases have precious little due process,” one of Vizguerra’s attorneys, Laura Lichter, said. “But what they have is precious and that is not being respected in this case.”
Vizguerra is a Mexican national who has lived in the United States for nearly 30 years. She gained national attention during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when she sheltered in Denver churches to avoid arrest, and she’s been critical of both Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Her attorneys have argued that Vizguerra was targeted in retaliation for her immigration activism and because of her criticisms of Trump and ICE. As she was being arrested, one ICE agent allegedly told Vizguerra that they “finally got” her.
In March, ICE officials told The Denver Post that an immigration judge had issued a final deportation order for Vizguerra and that a previous one-year stay blocking her removal had expired in February 2024. In June, a federal prosecutor wrote in court filings that ICE officials had sought to keep Vizguerra detained because, they alleged, she posed a flight risk.
ICE publicized Vizguerra’s arrest on social media, complete with a photo of the activist in handcuffs and a chain around her waist.
Speaking to supporters Monday, an at-times emotional Vizguerra wiped her eyes with a tissue and said she wanted to be home with her family and children. She called for a boycott of detention center commissary items and phone calls during the first week of every month. She criticized the food in the facility as “barely edible” and said she was “tired of being detained.”