4 MAY 8-14, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Home Free? DENVER IS CLEAR OF MIGRANT ENCAMPMENTS, BUT THE FEDERAL THREATS KEEP COMING. BY BENNITO L. KELT Y Finding an encampment of Venezuelan mi- grants in Denver wasn’t diffi cult in 2023 and early 2024, when there were tens of thousands of new arrivals. Just over a year later, the city is clear of migrant encamp- ments — but threats from the feds regarding Denver’s immigration policies keep coming. In early May 2023, dozens of migrants lived in a parking garage on the Auraria Campus while waiting for city services. In late 2023, hundreds of migrants slept in an encampment that nearly wrapped the block outside of the Quality Inn at 2601 Zuni Street, which was be- ing used as a shelter for migrants. Months later, a migrant encampment popped up outside of Elitch Gardens. Through it all, the City of Denver steadily swept the camps and moved migrants into temporary housing services. According to the city, there have been no migrant encampments in Denver since last May, and most migrants have left tempo- rary housing. Where have they gone? The city doesn’t track that, according to Denver spokesman Jon Ewing. Now, with President Donald Trump’s administration cracking down on immigra- tion and ramping up on deportation, more migrants are seeking asylum, not housing, and staying in touch with them is diffi cult. A dozen migrants who shared their What- sApp contact information with Westword over the last two years have disconnected from the app and are no longer reachable, including Luis Alvarado, a former cop jailed in Venezu- ela before fl eeing to the United States, and Raul Mendoza, a Venezuelan migrant who apologized to Denver for taking up resources. Although non-English speaking window washers can still be found on traffi c islands and highway exits, there are far fewer than there were last year. And Venezuelan mi- grants haven’t hosted any large meetups, as they did after the Venezuelan election last July, when a gathering fi lled a shopping plaza in Aurora with upwards of 4,000 people. More than 43,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, came to Denver starting in De- cember 2022, when the city fi rst declared an emergency over the wave of arrivals. Most of them had crossed the border by securing humanitarian parole, a designation that allows immigrants to enter temporarily for urgent reasons, and were then bussed to Denver, largely from El Paso. Around half of the 43,000 arrivals took city-issued bus tickets to other places, accord- ing to the Denver mayor’s offi ce. Many of those who stayed lived on the streets during their fi rst few months here because they lacked permission to legally work in the United States. Others were on the street because they had timed out of hotels-turned-shelters that only allowed stays of four to six weeks. But last summer, Denver closed its last hotel-turned-migrant shelter as new arrivals trailed off. During his appearance before a Republi- can-led congressional committee in March, Mayor Mike Johnston testifi ed that there are no longer migrant encampments in Denver. Denver’s Migrant Housing Pipeline In April 2024, Denver published a “newcomer playbook” advising other large cities on how to handle an infl ux of migrants. It suggests that hous- ing migrants was easier than housing the chronically homeless individuals whom the city has also been trying to help. According to the playbook, the city spent more than $3,000 per family to move them into housing; from October 2023 to late January 2024, the city helped more than 170 families. In all, about 1,000 migrants received housing assistance from the city, including apartment deposits and fi rst month’s rent, according to Ewing. Housing migrants is cheaper for taxpay- ers than letting them live in encampments because “if recent arrivals exit shelter and move to tents in the streets, the city incurs costs for outreach services, enforcement, solid waste removal, and increased emer- gency room visits,” the playbook notes. By February 2024, the city had already decreased the length-of-stay period for mi- grant shelters; in July, Denver closed its last hotel-turned-migrant shelter. Even as it published the playbook, the city was turning its focus on the Denver Asylum Seeker Program, designed to help migrants apply for asylum, a designation that allows someone to stay in the country for fear of persecution back home. While qualifi ed migrants applied for asylum, the city paid six months’ rent and trained them for jobs; after six months, they were expected to have a work permit, a job and an apartment. Most of the migrants who came to Denver qualifi ed for a quicker route to work permits than DASP because they had been paroled into the country using the CBP One app, which allowed immediate work permits for screened migrants under the Biden adminis- tration. The city assisted these migrants with their work permit applications; with housing assistance from local nonprofi ts, they were able to get into housing in a matter of weeks. During a visit to Aurora last October, Trump called the CBP “Kamala’s app for illegals.” The administration shut down the app in early January. Since the start of 2025, the city has shed most of the migrant services and programs created to handle the crisis. The fi rst class of DASP participants fi nished their programming at the end of 2024, and the program as a whole wrapped up early this year, Ewing says; all told, only about 900 migrants went through DASP. In December, the city ended its New- comer Program, an agency formed in April 2024 to oversee the migrant response; its head, Sarah Plastino, no longer works for the city. An information dashboard that the city used to update the number of migrant arrivals each day is now defunct. Migrants who received housing assis- tance from the city were not tracked after they moved out of temporary housing. Some of them were connected to case management services from nonprofi ts Papagayo and ViVe Wellness. A sizable portion of those migrants landed in Aurora — leading to the Venezu- elan gang controversy of last summer. The City of Aurora has threatened to sue Denver for not providing enough informa- tion regarding how Venezuelan migrants ended up in Aurora. Federal Immigration Enforcement Actions Since taking offi ce in January, Trump has followed through on threats to go after un- documented immigrants, as well as take action against jurisdictions with more wel- coming policies. Immigration and Customs Enforce- ment has recently led raids along the Front Range, with federal enforcement actions in Adams County, Aurora, Denver and Colo- rado Springs, where more than a hundred undocumented immigrants were arrested during a raid on an underground nightclub on April 27. Trump issued an executive or- der that stopped the work of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Ad- vocates Network, a local legal aid nonprofi t, including the hosting of informational sessions regard- ing detention centers and courts. (RMIAN’s work offering services for children has been reinstated.) Trump’s orders also stopped the re- settlement of refugees in Colorado. At the Denver City Coun- cil meeting on April 28, fi nance department staff revealed that the Trump administration had rescinded $24 million in grants in response to the city sheltering immigrants. Since his fi rst term, Trump has targeted Denver and Colorado as “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Denver was named a “sanctuary city” in a subpoena in 2017, and that designation resurfaced on May 2, when the Department of Justice sued Denver and Colorado to make their supposed sanctuary laws invalid. The City of Denver and the State of Colorado both have laws banning information like immigration status from being shared with ICE and federal law enforcement. Johnston has vowed to fi ght the suit; Governor Jared Polis has said he will comply with any laws. On May 3, the Democrat-controlled Colo- rado House passed a law that further limits what kind of information the state can share with federal law enforcement and where ICE can go in public schools, hospitals and librar- ies without a judge-signed warrant. The state Senate passed the bill in April. Polis has not indicated whether he will sign the bill into law. When Johnston stood up for Denver’s approach to immigrants last fall, he said that many in the city would stand up to the ad- ministration, including the Highland Moms. Andrea Ryall led the Highland Moms, a community group that responded to the in- fl ux of migrants by helping them get donated food and clothes, start LLCs to secure jobs, and even form baseball teams and reunite people with dogs. She continues to help migrants apply for asylum at bimonthly workshops, and says the events still attract people who once lived in encampments. According to Ryall, the demand for help with asylum applications has increased in re- cent months; she cites several success stories of people who went from living in encamp- ments to getting jobs and fi nding housing. “I have made some lifelong friendships that are rooted in those early days down at 26th and Zuni,” Ryall says. “I would do it again, and I haven’t stopped.” Email the author at [email protected]. NEWS KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS A police offi cer issues notices of a sweep at a migrant encampment under the West 48th Avenue overpass. BENNITO L. KELT Y
