Lawyers for Jeanette Vizguerra on Tuesday asked a federal judge to take over her case and release their client immediately saying the federal government had no statutory authority to take the immigrant advocate into detention earlier this week.
Laura Lichter, who represents Vizguerra, sued top Department of Homeland Security officials, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
In a filing in federal court, Lichter alleged that Vizguerra’s detention violates the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution and asked for a hearing where ICE officials would have to show cause for holding her.
They say she is being wrongfully held.
Vizguerra, who also goes by the surname Vizguerra-Ramirez, can only be detained for two statutory reasons, the filing said.
One law authorizes the detention of non-citizens during the wait for removal proceedings, but, her lawyers said, the federal government has not indicated to Vizguerra that she will be placed in removal proceedings.
The second reason a person can be detained is following the issuance of an administratively final order of removal. Vizguerra has no such order.
“To the extent respondents assert detention authority … that argument would be unfounded considering the government’s failure to abide by its due process protections,” the filing said. “The requirement that Ms. Vizguerra-Ramirez be informed of the intended reinstatement, and of her right to challenge that determination.”
What is Jeanette Vizguerra's history with ICE?
ICE agents granted Vizguerra a stay of removal on Aug. 8, 2013, and since that time, according to the filing, ICE has repeatedly granted extensions of that stay. Nonetheless, she was apprehended Monday morning by federal officials.
Through four U.S. presidents and their various ICE chiefs, Vizguerra has been fighting for legal permission to stay in the United States and raise her three American-born children.
She’s been in the country since 1997, when she walked across the border without inspection at age 25, according to court filings.
In 2009, during the Obama administration, she was placed in removal proceedings. She applied for an appeal on those proceedings, citing “unusual hardship” based on the fact she would be orphaning three U.S.-born children.
Lichter’s filing has four pages of details on how Vizguerra has tried to follow the rules and argue her case in the U.S. immigration courts and with ICE through decades of living here without status.
