Denver immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra 's daughters accept RFK award while she remains in ICE custody
Vizguerra's detention by ICE is approaching 12 weeks. For Luna Baez Vizguerra, seeing her mother's release from the GEO facility in Aurora would be the best award of all right now.
Jeanette Vizguerra was honored with a Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and the award was accepted by her daughter Luna Baez Vizguerra.
RFK Human Rights Award
"I'm just very desperate, very frustrated, very eager for her to be out," said Baez Vizguerra.
And yet, she's proud her mom now joins the ranks of global leaders recognized for "embodying Senator Robert F. Kennedy's belief in the power of courage to overcome injustice."
Baez Vizguerra said, "They have taken some form of risk, some form of repercussion, people that play it safe, people that don't typically risk themselves, they don't go ahead and receive this."
Jeanette Vizguerra entered the U.S. without authorization in 1997. In 2009, after a traffic stop, she was convicted of attempted possession of a forged instrument for using a fake Social Security number. Three of her four children were born in the U.S.
Vizguerra gained national prominence in 2017 when she took refuge inside a church.
Luna Baez Vizguerra accepted the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award on behalf of her mother Jeanette Vizguerra.
RFK Human Rights Award
"She chose to highlight and look at the injustices that every marginalized group faces in this country," said her daughter Luna.
Luna's grown up seeing her mom's work as a union organizer, connecting other immigrants to resources, and speaking out against the immigration system she says is unjust in the way it separates families.
ICE said Vizguerra is "a convicted criminal alien from Mexico who has a final order of deportation issued by a federal immigration judge. She has received legal due process in U.S. Immigration Court."
But Vizguerra and her family believe it's her advocacy that caught the attention of immigration enforcement agents, who picked her up in March outside her job at Target.
Jeanette Vizguerra, immigrant rights activist, poses for a portrait at First Unitarian Society of Denver in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday. January 26, 2021.
Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
"She is a political prisoner," said Baez Vizguerra. "The reason that she was detained was because she is so outspoken. The typical person isn't posted on the ICE page in shackles because of a traffic infraction."
Vizguerra's attorneys have a pending First Amendment free speech claim seeking her release.
Baez Vizguerra said, "It's frustrating that they arrested her in the way that they did that. It's still targeted when, within our Constitution, the First Amendment is so highly spoken on. This is a country that was built on that."
Last week, Vizguerra's attorneys filed a new motion to obtain her release on bond. In a recent filing, lawyers for ICE said that noncitizens cannot challenge a removal order on the basis that enforcement is selective.
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