US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have detained an undocumented woman who is a prominent immigration advocate in Colorado. Jeanette Vizguerra, 53, was reportedly taken into custody by ICE on Monday outside a Target store in the Denver area where she worked, according to her legal representatives, friends and family members, the Guardian reports. A Mexican immigrant who entered the US without authorization over 20 years ago, Vizguerra worked as a janitor before owning a moving company. She gained national attention in 2017 when she took sanctuary in a Denver church to avoid deportation during the first Trump administration. Vizguerra, who is a grandmother and mother of four children, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2017.
Her lawyer says she is now being held at a detention facility in Aurora, Colorado. An ICE spokesperson confirmed her arrest to the Guardian, and said Vizguerra was arrested “without incident” on Monday and would “remain in ICE custody pending removal from the United States”. The spokesperson described Vizguerra as “a convicted criminal alien from Mexico who has a final order of deportation issued by a federal immigration judge” and who “illegally entered the United States near El Paso, Texas, on Dec 24, 1997, and has received legal due process in US immigration court." On Tuesday, lawyers representing Vizguerra filed a writ of habeas corpus in court, urging ICE to bring Vizguerra before the court to determine if her detention is lawful. Vizguerra was charged in 2009 with driving without a license or insurance and for having an expired license plate. Court records show that those charges were dismissed. Her attorney at the time noted, per CNN, that she was also charged in connection with using a fake social security number on a job application. She pleaded guilty to “attempted possession of a forged instrument”, which the network noted prompted heightened scrutiny from immigration authorities. She spent the next several years appealing multiple deportation orders.
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