A bond hearing for national immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra ended in disappointment for her and her supporters Friday, with a judge putting off a decision on whether to release her from detention.
Immigration judge Brea Burgie told lawyers and the federal government that she needed time to consider the arguments made by the government and Vizguerra’s lawyers. She didn’t give a timeline for making her decision.
Friday’s hearing came after U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang earlier this week ordered the government to show an immigration court through “clear and convincing” evidence that Vizguerra is both a flight risk and a danger to the community or she must be released.
To do that, the federal government argued to Burgie that Vizguerra is a lawbreaker, has used falsified documents, including a social security card, to obtain work in the United States, and that she had traffic violations. Her lawyers countered that she had been here since 1997, she owned a home, she has American-born children, including one serving in the U.S. Air Force and that she had multiple previous immigration judges grant her bond, and stays of relief. They also issued work authorizations for her for at least five years.
Overall, Vizguerra’s lead attorney Laura Lichter has repeatedly argued that Vizguerra was arrested and detained by ICE in March because she’s been an outspoken advocate about immigration reform in this country. She has no serious criminal record and was detained on a lunch break at Target. She has been in detention ever since.
Wang’s order that the government hold a bond hearing had been seen as a win in her case and advocates believed that Vizguerra could have been released as early as Friday afternoon.
Instead, when she left the immigration courtroom to be returned to a room at the GEO detention center in Aurora she clutched one of her daughters, and everyone was in tears. They were quickly separated by guards.
“We will continue to stand with Ms. Vizguerra,” said Jen Piper, of the American Friend’s Service Committee, who attended her hearing on Friday. “Jeanette has paid a terrific price in deprivation of her freedom for the simple act of speaking her conscience, of speaking truth to power, over many years. The Trump Administration targets Jeanette to silence all of us, to convince us to look the other way.”
In earlier statements, her kids said they hoped to spend the holidays with their mother.
“After 9 months, our family has been left with a huge hole where my mom has always been,” said Tania Baez, the oldest daughter and a recipient of deferred action on immigration, or DACA, since she was brought to the US as a child.
Vizguerra has been in Colorado since 1997 when she left Mexico City when, she has said, her then-husband was threatened at gunpoint. She cleaned office buildings, joined the SEIU union to fight for better wages and launched a cleaning and moving company.
She was first placed in removal proceedings in 2009 for a traffic violation, a dirty license plate, according to her attorneys. After that, she had multiple stays granted and continued to work and raise her American-born children.
Her first application for another stay during the first Trump administration was denied and she moved into a church to avoid removal. She received international attention for this, including being named one of the most influential people of the year by Time Magazine.
Her lawyers said on Friday that she told ICE at the time what she was doing and told them she was going to continue to drive to work every day. At that time, ICE left her alone and then eventually she was granted another stay with the help of politicians and a lot of media publicity about her story.
Vizguerra continued to go to her immigration checkins and continued to work up until her detention this year.
Wang’s ruling, issued earlier this week, is complicated. In addition to ordering a bond hearing within a week, she ruled that she did have jurisdiction to determine whether the federal government overstepped their bounds -- and possibly violated Vizguerra’s First Amendment rights -- by arresting and detaining her. Federal government attorneys argued that federal courts generally lack authority to review detention decisions.
First Amendment violations were subject to argument on Friday as well -- both before and during court. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which runs the courts at the detention center, initially banned media from entering the courtroom.
Lawyers and advocates pointed out that they can’t ban a group of people from a courtroom because of what they do for a living.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office had to be called in and, in about two hours, ICE backed down. They allowed five reporters and a handful of community advocates to join Vizguerra’s family to watch the proceedings.
