DENVER — Attorneys representing immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra claim she was "targeted" and detained by immigration officials "for her activism, for her open speech about the process, and for her organizing."
Vizguerra was detained by U.S. Immigrants and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents outside of her job at Target on March 17. She has lived in the U.S. for nearly 30 years after escaping violence in Mexico City in 1997 with her husband and her then-6-year-old daughter.
Vizguerra has been fighting deportation since 2009 and was previously convicted of two misdemeanors during her time in the country. She has become a spokesperson for immigrant rights and founded the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition.
A day after her arrest, Vizguerra filed a petition in the U.S. District Court of Colorado to ask a judge to determine whether ICE acted within the law in detaining her, according to the timeline provided by ICE.
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Attorneys for the government and Vizguerra gathered for a status conference in federal court on Friday. U.S. District Judge Nina Wang was set to hear oral arguments from both sides. However, on Thursday, Laura Lichter, the senior managing attorney at Lichter Immigration and a member of Vizguerra's legal team, notified the court of their intent to amend the petition.
In addition to the original petition, Lichter and her team are now claiming that Vizguerra's First Amendment rights were violated by ICE, citing "recent public statements regarding the detention" of their client.
"What happened today is we explained to the judge that we're keeping our original case, saying that her detention is unlawful, that it's illegal because ICE is waving around a piece of paper," Lichter told Denver7 on Friday. "We also informed the judge in this case that because of these really disturbing social media posts and other public statements that we've seen from officials, maybe political surrogates, we're pretty sure there's something else going on here as to why she ended up in detention in the first place."
In a news conference after Friday's court hearing, Lichter added that Vizguerra's account of her arrest on March 17 includes an officer telling her, “Finally, we got you.”
The initial petition still stands, and Vizguerra's lawyers believe her removal order isn't valid.
Vizguerra was appealing a removal order back in 2012 when she left the U.S. to visit her dying mother in Mexico. Her legal team argues when she re-entered the U.S. the following year, immigration officials’ reinstatement of that order was "rife with procedural flaws."
"We're here now because when the government did the paperwork in this case, they just kind of never really did it right," Lichter said. "They never finalized it. They never did what was necessary to have a valid order. And I know this gets in the weeds a little bit, but [this order] literally is an entire deportation proceeding reduced to a single piece of paper."
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Former ICE Denver Field Office Director John Fabbricatore was previously involved in Vizguerra’s case and has followed it for over a decade. He said the comment allegedly made by an ICE officer during Vizguerra's arrest is "hearsay" but also "doesn't matter."
"She avoided being deported many, many times," he said. "If an officer did say that, which I'm not saying that they did, it's still the truth."
He maintains that while Vizguerra has First Amendment rights even as an undocumented immigrant, she faces a valid, final deportation order based on the legal process before and after Vizguerra left for Mexico in 2012.
"The First Amendment is not a shield against deportation," he said. "She is illegally present in the United States. That is the bottom line. She has had her due process."
Vizguerra's legal team must amend its complaint and provide further details about how Vizguerra was allegedly targeted. The amended complaint is due by April 8.
"The government then has three weeks to respond, and then we'll get to see what they bring up," Lichter said. "In the meantime, we are keeping channels of communication open because we really think if somebody looks at this case, they'll see that there was an injustice here."
Vizguerra is expected to remain in immigration custody during this time.
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