by Anjeanette Damon, photography by Zaydee Sanchez for ProPublica
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For months, Venezuelan migrants had been arriving in Denver with nowhere to go. At first, they came in groups small enough to escape notice by most. A few immigrant aid groups with connections on the U.S.-Mexico border warned city officials to prepare for more but were ignored.
Then, in December 2022, a busload of about 90 migrants stepped into the freezing night, bound for Denver Rescue Mission. The shelter, which serves the city’s growing unhoused community, was full.
City officials and local aid organizations scrambled, filling a recreation center with beds to keep migrants from sleeping on the streets. A week later, their growing numbers prompted an emergency declaration, freeing up state and federal resources to help. The city filled a second recreation center with beds and transformed a third into an intake center. By the end of the month, city shelters housed nearly 500 migrants.
It was just the beginning.
Most of the migrants crossed into the U.S. in El Paso, Texas, which is an easy bus ride away from Denver compared with Chicago or New York. Through the winter and early spring, they arrived in the high-plains city largely on their own accord, drawn by word of mouth that Denver had jobs.
Then in May 2023, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending busloads of migrants to Denver, seeking to score political points by forcing liberal cities to share in what he saw as a burden being foisted on border states.
Mike Johnston became Denver’s mayor two months later. An ambitious politician with big ideas and a flair for poignant speeches, Johnston was a fluent Spanish speaker who had been principal of a high school with mostly immigrant students. He was determined to do right by the people arriving in his city, the “newcomers,” as the city took to calling them. If Abbott thought he was sending a “plague” to “somehow destroy” Denver, Johnston said, the city would prove the migrants’ arrival to be the opposite. He believed that with a little help getting settled, they would fuel Denver’s economy and enrich its culture as generations of immigrants had before.
As Johnston mobilized the city to care for the newcomers, he was also grappling with a growing unhoused population. More than 5,800 people were experiencing homelessness; many lived in downtown encampments. Johnston had declared a state of emergency on his first day in office, and promised to house 1,000 people by the end of 2023.
But by the following January, Denver was feeling the full weight of being a welcoming city. More than 300 migrants a day were rolling into Denver, just over 4,000 were living in shelters and hundreds more were sleeping on the street. The city had spent $42 million to help them, with no sign of meaningful alternatives from the federal government. And with record numbers of asylum seekers arriving at the border, it seemed likely more would make their way to Denver. Local newscasters called it a crisis. Aid workers reported flaring tensions between migrants and the unhoused at food banks and shelters.
This was the moment that Monica Navarro and her family arrived.
She and her partner, Miker Silva, had just $10 between them. But because Denver wasn’t leaving migrants without support, the couple and their two children, ages 13 and 9, were quickly given a free room at the Comfort Inn. They could stay for six weeks. The city hoped that would be enough for the family to find their own housing, either in Denver or elsewhere. Navarro and Silva had no idea how they would support themselves, but they were grateful for the help and determined to make it on their own.
“We came here to make a new life, not so much for ourselves but for our daughters,” Navarro said.
Tim Rogers, a Denver native, was riveted by media coverage of the arriving migrants. The stories focused not just on what the mayor was spending, but on how the community was rallying to support newcomers. Residents delivered food, knitted winter hats and even opened spare bedrooms to them.
Watching these families shuttled into hotels and shelters, Rogers couldn’t help but think about his own decade-long battle with homelessness. He had nothing against the migrants and grasped their plight in a way only someone who’s lived on the streets can. But he had spent years on a waiting list for housing assistance. He still had friends living on the streets. And he couldn’t reconcile how the city would spend so heavily on the newcomers when its homeless population had long been desperate for that kind of help.
“It ain’t fair,” he said. “We got guys doing what they’re supposed to do, seeing their case managers and trying to get housing. If they ask to get a pair of shoes they get a big runaround.”
Even Johnston wondered how long the city could keep it up. At the end of 2023, hundreds of migrants who had timed out of the shelters had erected a sprawling tent encampment, where families with small children were living in the dead of winter. Under mounting political and humanitarian pressure, he organized a city effort to disband the camp and in one day got all of the migrants sheltered again.
But as Johnston touted the city’s accomplishment to reporters, two more buses pulled up with more newcomers in need of help.
“‘It was like, ‘Will there ever be an end?’” Johnston told ProPublica. “That was a moment where, even when we were creating heroic solutions, we weren’t sure how sustainable they would be.”
Denver’s mayor Mike Johnston believes the city has a duty to care for its newcomers. A Sanctuary CityColorado was once openly hostile to immigrants. English-only and show-me-your-papers laws were strictly enforced. Businesses faced stiff penalties for hiring undocumented workers, and immigration officers routinely raided restaurants, farms and factories across the state.
Then, about 15 years ago, immigrant rights activists pushed back, organizing campaigns to shield migrants from the raids and galvanizing support to repeal the anti-immigration laws. The state’s Latino population grew by 25% in the last decade. Activists organized immigrants and residents alike to support pro-immigration policies. Over the next decade, Denver adopted some of the most progressive protections in the country. Local police are barred from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on civil deportations or detainers, and undocumented migrants can’t be arrested based on their status. During the Trump administration, churches and community aid groups formed networks to host refugees and protect people from deportation.
Both the community and Denver’s largely Democratic elected leaders were proud of its reputation as a sanctuary city (they prefer the term “welcoming city”). When Abbott began busing migrants to Denver, they weren’t about to be cowed.
But the newcomers weren’t like past immigrants, who typically chose a destination based on the advice of family or friends who had established lives in the U.S. and could help with a job and place to stay. Such people arrived in immigrant neighborhoods and agricultural towns without........