Denver — A prominent Colorado immigration and labor activist was released Monday after spending nine months in an immigration detention center, his supporters said.
Janet Vizguerra left an immigration detention center in suburban Denver a day after a judge ruled she could post $5,000 bail, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which was working with attorneys for Vizguerra and her family.
The group posted photos of Vizguerra, a mother of four, standing with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson outside the center’s gate in Aurora, Colorado.
Vizguerra gained prominence After taking refuge in churches in Colorado to avoid deportation during the first Trump administration. Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world in 2017. She was arrested Earlier this year in the parking lot of the Denver-area Target store where she worked.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Tuesday that Vizguerra received “due process” and that she will continue to do her job.
“We will find, arrest and deport illegal aliens regardless of whether they are this year’s featured figures,” she said.
Vizguerra, who came to Colorado in 1997 from Mexico City, has been fighting deportation since 2009 after she was stopped in suburban Denver and discovered she had a fake Social Security card bearing her name and date of birth but someone else’s actual number, according to a 2019 lawsuit she filed against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Vizguerra did not know the number belonged to someone else at the time, the suit said.
Vizguerra’s lawyers said ICE was trying to deport her based on an order that was never valid. She appealed her detention In federal court.
A federal judge recently ordered an immigration court hearing to determine whether Vizguera should continue to be detained in a suburban Denver detention facility while her case is pending.
Vizguerra thanked her attorneys, who mostly worked on her case pro bono, in a statement released by the American Friends Service Committee.
“They realize this issue is bigger than me,” she said. “This fight is about the constitutional rights we all share, and the human rights and dignity of all people.”