Attorneys for Colorado immigrant-rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra argued in a new court filing Monday that her six-month detention is unconstitutional.
They want a federal judge to grant her an immediate release or hold a bond hearing.
“She’s now been detained for longer than six months. At this point, the burden shifts to establish that continued detention is actually necessary,” Laura Lichter, one of Vizguerra’s attorneys, told reporters following a vigil outside the Aurora immigration detention center where Vizguerra is incarcerated.
“There’s not going to have much of a basis to do that, because Jeanette is not dangerous. She’s not going to run away,” Lichter said. “She wants to be right here doing what she’s been doing, fighting for her legal rights, within the warm embrace of her family outside of this private prison.”
The new filing rests on precedent set by a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court case. The government has about three weeks to respond.
Vizguerra, a longtime activist for the labor movement and immigrant rights, has been held at the Aurora facility since March, when she was arrested outside the Target store where she worked amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. Her lawyers immediately sought her release, alleging in a habeas corpus petition that she is being retaliated against in response to her constitutionally-protected speech and protest.
Vizguerra, who has lived in the United States for nearly three decades, has been publicly critical of President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the country’s immigration system in general. She gained national attention when she sought sanctuary in a Denver church to avoid deportation during Trump’s first term, landing on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people.
“This administration, we believe, went after Jeanette and targeted her for who she is, for what she represents and what she means to this community,” Lichter said. “It’s not just shameful, but it’s unconstitutional.”
Immigration authorities, however, say Vizguerra is a “convicted criminal alien,” referring to 2009 conviction of using a false Social Security number. She also pleaded guilty to entering the country illegally in 2013 — she had returned to Mexico to see her dying mother — and was sentenced to a year of probation.
Federal lawyers are relying on a 2013 reinstated removal order to justify Vizguerra’s detention and an effort to deport her, but her lawyers argue that the order was filed illegally and carries no weight. She has received several stays of removal since then, the most recent expiring last year.
Vizguerra addressed the crowd gathered outside the detention facility on Monday night through a video call.
“From the beginning, me making my case public meant that I became a target for the government, because I made them uncomfortable,” she said, translated by Miriam Ordoñez, the immigrant rights coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee.
“For the first time, I feel vulnerable. I feel my health is deteriorating,” she said. “I am extremely worried for my family and I need to be out with them.”
Vizguerra called for a boycott of the commissary and phone services within immigration detention centers across the country during the first week of each month so people who are detained can “stop these profits and take back our power.”
Ordońez said it takes between $80 and $100 to “survive” in a detention center like the one in Aurora, which averages about 1,100 detained people per day. Phone calls can cost about $1 per minute, and a pack of ramen noodles costs $7.