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Vol. 81/No. 21      May 29, 2017

 

Immigrant workers in Colorado beat back deportations

 
BY ALYSON KENNEDY
DENVER — Jeanette Vizguerra walked out of the First Baptist Church here May 12, surrounded by supporters chanting “Si luchamos, ganamos” (If we fight, we win).

Vizguerra and supporters marched to the State Capitol Building. She was joined by Arturo Hernández García for a press conference to announce they had each won a two-year stay of deportation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

For 86 days Vizguerra, who has lived and worked in Colorado since 1997, had been staying in two churches that offered her sanctuary to prevent her deportation.

She will keep fighting “to resist deportation and exploitation” of the undocumented, Vizguerra told the press, pointing to Ingrid Encalada Latorre, 33, from Peru, who has been living for over five months at the Mountain View Friends Meeting house to prevent ICE from deporting her. Latorre, a nursing home worker, has lived in the U.S. since 2000.

Originally from Mexico, Vizguerra has worked cleaning office buildings and was a member and organizer of Service Employees International Union Local 105. She is a well-known labor and immigrant rights fighter. Three of her children are U.S. citizens.

Vizguerra first faced deportation proceedings in 2009 when she was convicted of using a false ID after a traffic stop. She visited Mexico after her mother’s death, and, when she returned to the U.S. in 2013, she was detained and accused of illegal entry. ICE granted her several stays of removal.

In February ICE rejected her application to renew the stay and Vizguerra accelerated her fight for the right to remain in the U.S., which received widespread news coverage in the area.

Hernández has been fighting deportation since 2014 when he took sanctuary for nine months at the First Unitarian Church. After protests demanded he not be deported, ICE sent a letter saying he was no longer a priority. He walked out of the church in July 2015, but ICE detained him again on April 26 this year.

There have been numerous protests against the deportations of Vizguerra, Hernández and Latorre. On May Day 150 people rallied outside the GEO Aurora Detention Facility where Hernández was being held. The GEO group, one of the largest private contract prison businesses in the country, is being sued for abusive treatment of tens of thousands of immigrants.
 
 
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