An unauthorized immigrant who gained media attention during the first term of President Trump for seeking refuge inside a Denver church’s basement has been taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Jeanette Vizguerra was detained by officials outside Target, where she was working just outside of Denver.
Jordan Garcia, an immigrant-rights advocate, claims the illegal alien was told by one ICE agent, “We finally got you.”
According to a timeline compiled by the New York Times, Vizguerra entered the United States unlawfully in 1997, but her presence did not attract law enforcement notice until 2009, when a routine traffic stop uncovered her use of a counterfeit Social Security card.
After pleading guilty to “attempted possession of a forged instrument,” she was held in jail for around three weeks. In 2013, she left the U.S. to visit her sick mother and then attempted to re-enter through the Texas border. However, she was found guilty of illegal entry and received a one-year term of supervised probation.
NEW: ICE confirms to @FoxNews that they arrested Jeanette Vizguerra, a convicted criminal Mexican illegal alien & immigration activist, in Aurora, CO yesterday. ICE confirms she has a final order of removal (deportation order) via a DOJ immigration judge, and has repeatedly had… pic.twitter.com/MwVuUEEGqe
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) March 18, 2025
Vizguerra has had multiple stays of deportation over the years, but it appears that under President Trump’s second term, her time is finally up. That wasn’t the case during Trump’s first term when she was able to hide in the basement of First Unitarian Church in Denver after her sixth stay was denied.
She packed up her kids and headed to the church, claiming to local media that she had been a hard-working person who paid her taxes for years, “a big difference from President Trump.”
It is unclear how she was able to pay taxes with a fake Social Security card without a valid Social Security number attached to it.
