Federal judge to consider freeing an immigration activist

By Colleen Slevin

Denver (AP) – A Federal Denver Judge should hear on Friday if an immigration and work activist who took refuge in the churches of Colorado to avoid deportation during the first Trump administration should be released from detention.

Jeanette Vizguerra was arrested by the US immigration and customs forces on March 17 and is owned in her immigration detention center in the suburbs of Denver.

Ice says that Vizguerra entered the United States from Mexico illegally in 1997 and was being expulsion. In a statement shortly after his arrest, Ice said that the mother of four had a final expulsion order and “had received a regular legal procedure before the American immigration court”.

But his lawyers say that the order is not valid. They filed a legal challenge asking the district judge to order us to the federal authorities to release her.

Wang has made an order prohibiting the expulsion of Vizguerra while the legal challenge is played out.

Ice began to try to expel Vizguerra in 2009 during the Obama administration after being arrested in the suburbs of Denver and found a fraudulent social security card with her own name and date of birth, but someone else’s number, according to a 2019 trial that she brought against Ice. Vizguer would not know that the number belonged to someone else at the time, the trial said.

While a judge made a referral order against her, she also had the opportunity to leave the country voluntarily, which she finally did to try to see her mother before her death in 2012, said her lawyers in the current petition before Wang.

Since Vizguerra left alone before returning later to the United States, there is no order for returning so that the ice reintegrates, indicates the petition.

It is not clear how long Wang could reign. But she noted that the case raises “complex questions” concerning immigration law and that it could not find a similar case.

Originally published: March 28, 2025 at 10:33 PDT