Photos: Jailed Activist Calls for Boycotts Amid Push for ICE Release

Six months have passed since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained notable Mexican activist Jeanette Vizguerra and incarcerated her at an ICE detention center in Aurora. Now, Vizguerra and her attorneys are pushing for her release within the next month, she told supporters outside the detention center via a video call on Monday, September 29.

“It’s wrong to keep me detained,” Vizguerra said to supporters outside of the ICE detention center, a facility operated by the GEO Group at 3130 Oakland Street in Aurora. “For the first time in my activism, I’m very tired. I feel my health is deteriorating. I don’t want to be separated from my children, from my family. I need to be out with them, and I want to be out with my community.”

Vizguerra said that her attorneys filed a motion on Monday arguing that she shouldn’t be held indefinitely, and that the six months she’s spent detained violated her First Amendment rights. The newest court filing demands an immediate release or a bond hearing, Vizguerra told her supporters on Monday.

Her legal defense has argued since she was first detained that Vizguerra was arrested for her outspoken criticism of ICE and President Donald Trump. Vizguerra came to Denver almost thirty years ago from Mexico City, although she’s faced deportation multiple times, she’s been able to stay through stays of execution against her removal, with the most recent expiring last year.

Vizguerra was arrested by ICE agents outside of the Target where she worked in March. She is best known for living in a Capitol Hill church to avoid deportation in 2017. The standoff against ICE and the first Trump administration brought her national attention, and she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people later that year. In May, she won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award while incarcerated.

On Monday, Vizguerra also called for detainees in ICE facilities around the country and their loved ones to boycott commissary and phone services, saying that they need to cut off the companies profiting from these services and “from injustice.” According to Vizguerra, phone calls cost about $5, and detainees in the Aurora ICE center are forced to spend between $70 and $120 a week on “horrible” commissary food because the cafeteria food provided to them is “inedible.”

“Imagine how much they can profit” when considering the Aurora ICE facility holds upwards of 1,400 people, and nationwide, ICE “is seeking to add more beds and increase their profits,” she said. According to a New York Times article from August, ICE has about 60,000 people detained nationwide, while a Washington Post piece form the same month reported that ICE plans to increase its national detention capacity to 100,000 people, including 4,000 in Colorado.

“Every day, phone and video call and commissary companies gain millions and millions of dollars,” Vizguerra said to her supporters. “I’m calling on each detainee. Here we have power, it doesn’t matter that we’re detained, to take money away from these corporations by not buying phone or video calls or commissary.”

Supporters of Vizguerra and other detained immigrants protested outside of the ICE facility for about an hour. See photos of yesterday’s action below.