Nine months after ICE picked her up on her lunch break outside a Target store, immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez went before an immigration judge Friday to plead for her release from the Aurora detention center.
Immigration Judge Brea Burgie did not immediately rule on Vizguerra’s request, saying the case was complex and she had just learned of it Friday morning. She said she would decide in writing “as soon as I possibly can.”
Vizguerra’s daughters, who had hoped the hearing would result in their mother’s release either Friday or by Monday, cried and hugged her in the hallway outside the detention center courtroom, until a guard told them they could not touch each other.
The immigration hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang, who said in a ruling this week that federal immigration officials must prove that Vizguerra is a flight risk or a danger to the community if they wanted to continue holding her in the detention center.
Vizguerra’s supporters, who have held vigils every week outside the immigration detention center, were gathered outside during the hearing.
Journalists were initially blocked from entering the courtroom by officials with GEO Group, the private company that runs the detention center. The officials said that they were given verbal orders by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that no one aside from Vizguerra’s family, legal team and witnesses could enter the courtroom.
One journalist who took a photo in the lobby of the detention center was ordered to leave, as detention center officials threatened to call Aurora police.
After two hours, journalists and a few community supporters were let into the hearing. The reversal followed calls by Vizguerra’s attorney, Laura Lichter, to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Judge Burgie’s intervention.
“We had done everything in our power to make sure that everybody had access to this hearing,” Burgie said as the hearing began.
Vizguerra, who once took refuge in a Denver church to avoid deportation and in 2017 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, asked for the bond hearing after she had been held for longer than 180 days. The legal move, forcing the government to justify her prolonged detention, is more straightforward than other claims Vizguerra’s legal team had already made to try to win her release.
They have argued that Vizguerra’s right to free speech was violated because she was targeted for speaking out against the Trump administration. Wang, in her ruling this week ordering the bond hearing, said that while the allegations “raise serious First Amendment concerns,” she was not ready to rule on that claim. The judge could revisit the First Amendment issue depending on the outcome of Vizguerra’s bond hearing, however.
Vizguerra has been locked up by ICE since she was taken into custody March 17 during her lunch break from Target. Federal authorities had said they planned to deport her to Mexico, but Vizguerra’s attorneys won a court ruling to temporarily block deportation until Vizguerra could have the case heard in court.
Vizguerra entered the U.S. illegally in El Paso, Texas, in 1997, according to federal officials. In 2009, she was pulled over in Arapahoe County and authorities found that she had used documents that included a false Social Security number. The mother of four, including three children born in the United States, has been fighting deportation efforts ever since.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
Hence then, the article about immigrant activist jeanette vizguerra gets bond hearing after 9 months in ice detention was published today ( ) and is available on Colorado Sun ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra gets bond hearing after 9 months in ICE detention )
Also on site :