An undocumented woman in Denver who became a symbol of immigrant resistance during President Trump’s first term as she evaded deportation was arrested at work on Monday by federal immigration agents, her family and immigrant activists said.
Jeanette Vizguerra, 53, had been on her break at a Target store near Denver when immigration agents took her into custody, said Jordan Garcia, an immigrant-rights advocate with the American Friends Service Committee who has known Ms. Vizguerra for 15 years.
Recounting details of the arrest that Ms. Vizguerra had relayed to her family, Mr. Garcia said one of the agents told her, “We finally got you.”
Ms. Vizguerra drew national attention when, in early 2017, she packed her clothes and moved with her three youngest children into a church basement in Colorado, hoping that the sanctuary of a house of worship would protect her from Mr. Trump’s deportation plans. In 2021, she received a one-year stay of deportation from the Biden administration, but friends said Tuesday she was aware of her peril.
Her detention has already stirred a backlash from Colorado Democratic politicians and immigrant-rights supporters, who accused the Trump administration of trying to silence critics of its immigration crackdown.
Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver condemned Ms. Vizguerra’s arrest as a “Putin-style persecution of political dissidents” that had ensnared a working-class mother who had dedicated her life to helping other undocumented immigrants.
“We don’t see this as immigration enforcement,” he said in an interview. “This is about targeting political opponents and using the force of your government to punish them.”
Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, called Ms. Vizguerra a “pillar of her community” and urged U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to release her. The agency did not immediately comment on her case.
On Tuesday, lawyers for Ms. Vizguerra filed a legal challenge to her detention in federal court. Protesters and family members were keeping vigil outside the immigration detention center in the Denver suburb of Aurora where she was being held.
Ms. Vizguerra was the latest high-profile immigrant detained or deported by federal authorities as the Trump administration ramps up its immigration crackdown. While other cases rose to prominence for their involvement in Middle East controversies, Ms. Vizguerra may be the first to have gained attention for her immigrant-rights advocacy.
A Brown University professor and doctor with a valid visa was deported over the weekend after Homeland Security officials said she attended the funeral for a Hezbollah leader while on a trip to Lebanon. Earlier this month, a legal permanent resident who led campus protests at Columbia University over Israel’s war in Gaza was detained by immigration agents without any criminal charges, but nevertheless accused by the Trump administration of “siding with terrorists.”
Ms. Vizguerra’s supporters said she had spent years dreading — and preparing for — this moment.
A Mexican citizen, she crossed without authorization into the United States in 1997, found work as a house cleaner and janitor in Denver and had three American-born children, all citizens, according to court filings.
Her long, tangled saga with America’s immigration-enforcement system began in 2009 when she was pulled over in a traffic stop in the Denver suburbs.
The officer who pulled her over asked whether she was in the United States legally or illegally, and searched her bag after she declined to answer, according to legal papers later filed by her lawyers. The officer found a made-up Social Security number that she had used to apply for work, and Ms. Vizguerra was charged with misdemeanor identity theft. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 21 days in jail.
Ms. Vizguerra was then placed into removal proceedings, which she fought and appealed for years. In 2013, after she returned to Mexico to visit her dying mother, she was arrested on her return through Texas and convicted of illegal entry.
After five postponements of deportation, Mr. Trump was elected. And in early 2017, she fled to a church.
“My intuition,” Ms. Vizguerra said at the time, “tells me that if I go in, I’m not coming out.”
Politicians rallied to her case, and Time named her one of the most influential people of 2017.
More than seven years later, Colorado and Ms. Vizguerra are once more at the heart of the battle over immigration enforcement.
About 42,000 migrants arrived in Denver in recent years, many of them on buses sent by the governor of Texas at the height of the migration crisis. The influx strained Denver’s budget and city services and became fodder for the presidential campaign.
Mr. Trump made a series of exaggerated claims that Venezuelan gangs had overrun decrepit apartment buildings in Aurora. Earlier this month, Denver’s mayor was summoned to Congress by Republican lawmakers who accused him and other big-city Democrats of trying to flout Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts.
With Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, Ms. Vizguerra and her allies recognized that she was once again vulnerable.
“Her case is a huge miscarriage of justice,” said Hans Meyer, her former immigration attorney and friend of Ms. Vizguerra for 20 years.
Mr. Garcia, from the American Friends Service Committee, said that in recent months, Ms. Vizguerra had helped educate immigrants about their legal rights and prepare for the possibility of deportation by drafting a power of attorney. She had made similar preparations.
“She had to live her life and take care of her kids,” Mr. Garcia said. “If they can do this to Jeanette, they can do this to anyone.”
Miriam Jordan contributed reporting from Denver.
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