Updated at 10:20 a.m. on Friday, March 21, 2025
The Trump administration must explain to a federal judge in writing by Monday why they have detained activist Jeanette Vizguerra.
And in the meantime, the judge said, agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had better not deport her.
Attorneys for Vizguerra filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday in U.S. District Court, a day after she was picked up by agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement while on a lunch break outside the Target store where she works.
U.S. District Court court judge Nina Y. Wang issued an order demanding the government show cause why she should not grant Vizguerra’s application, and release her from ICE detention in Aurora.
That’s due on Monday. A hearing is scheduled in Denver for the afternoon of March 28.
But on Friday, Wang issued a separate and seemingly unambiguous order to an array of ICE officials, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi that they "SHALL NOT REMOVE petitioner Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez from the District of Colorado or the United States unless and until the court or the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacates this order."
The Wang order does not reference the ongoing battle between the Trump administration and U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia over a series of flights from the U.S. to El Salvador deporting Venezuelans last week. Some of those flights may have departed, and certainly continued to fly, after Boasberg ordered them stopped. But even without referencing that incident, Wang's intent seemed clear.
Originally from Mexico, Vizguerra came to prominence while living in a Denver church basement to avoid deportation early in the first Trump administration.
Her detention on Monday sparked a firestorm of criticism from local and state Democratic leaders. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston called it a “Putin-style persecution of political dissidents.”
Vizguerra’s attorneys are fighting her detention and pending removal from the country on multiple fronts, including a petition to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that argues the 2013 order to deport her is invalid because of a procedural error.
The government, her legal team said, issued a final order of removal without proper notice to Vizguerra, in violation of her due process right to challenge the order.
If there is a new order for removal, Vizguerra has never seen it, according to her attorneys.
Editor's note: This story was updated to include new information from a new court order from U.S. District Judge Nina Wang.
