ICE Detains Prominent Immigration Activist in Grim Sign for Future
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Jeanette Vizguerra outside her job.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has detained a prominent immigration advocate in Colorado.
Agents stopped Jeanette Vizguerra Monday in the parking lot of a Target where she works. Her daughter told NBC 9NEWS that she is being detained at an ICE facility on Oakland Street in Aurora, Colorado. Her family has not been in communication with her since about 3 p.m. Monday.
“Jeanette Vizguerra is a mother and pillar in her community,” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet posted on X Tuesday. “I am deeply concerned about ICE’s actions to detain her without any due process, like a deportation order. ICE should ensure Jeanette has legal counsel and immediately release her.”
Vizguerra spent years fighting her own deportation. She was charged with a misdemeanor in 2009 for driving without a license, after which authorities discovered she was undocumented and attempted to remove her from the country. But Vizguerra drew national attention for thwarting those efforts by taking refuge in a church, which has historically been considered a “sensitive location” inaccessible by ICE.
She proceeded to reside in the church for three years, and eventually created a network of local churches to house immigrants in similar need, called the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition.
Vizguerra was again scheduled for deportation in 2017 but once more took refuge in a church. She was granted a stay of deportation by the Biden administration in 2021.
The longtime activist arrived from Mexico City without proper documentation in 1997. Since then, she has struggled to find a pathway to citizenship, lacking the paperwork needed to apply for permanent residency.
ICE policy prohibits agents from accessing schools, hospitals, and religious sites such as churches, mosques, and synagogues, as well as public demonstrations and religious ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. But Donald Trump revoked that ordinance mere hours after his inauguration, leaving practically no shelter for immigrants that the Trump administration deems deserving of shoving out.
Trump has based his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the falsehood that the people who have entered the U.S. are murderers and rapists, and that they are a drain on the country’s economy and government resources as unemployed migrants struggle to obtain work and housing. In reality, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens. And in 2022, approximately 4.5 percent of the workforce was undocumented, contributing to some $75.6 billion in total taxes, according to the American Immigration Council.
Vizguerra, however, saw the writing on the wall.
“Whatever place. I don’t care if it’s a hospital, I don’t care if it’s a school, I don’t care if it’s a church.… I don’t care if some people have 40, 50 years here,” she told CBS News Colorado in January. “Everybody is at risk.”
That has proved truer than ever just two months into Trump’s second term. So far, the administration has deported immigrants of all stripes. It has removed individuals who’ve lived and worked in the country for decades, individuals who are married to U.S. citizens, and individuals in the process of renewing their visas. It has also revoked permanent resident status from people who have dared to speak out against the Trump agenda.