One chilly day earlier this winter, a student came to my office looking tired and stressed. I assumed it was the usual: With finals around the corner, assignments were piling up. But instead, she told me about a mother and two young children from Venezuela who arrived on her doorstep a few days before, asking for directions to the local elementary school. They hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, wore summer clothes despite the chilly Denver air, and had no idea how to navigate the city they had been bused to from Texas earlier that week.
As my student and I learned, this was just one family among thousands that had recently arrived in Denver. Nearly 38,000 South American migrants have arrived in Denver since August — a surge that has overwhelmed the city’s support network. One family I have been helping reported that shelters are so overfilled that families must double- and triple-up in rooms, with unrelated adults sleeping beside young children. In private Facebook groups created by a network of informal volunteers across the city, many post pictures of inadequate — even moldy — shelter meals. Meanwhile, waiting lists are months-long for legal aid to assist with immigration and work permits, and the city’s rental and food assistance programs are running short of funds .
As a result, thousands of families are going to sleep hungry tonight in Denver, many in makeshift tent encampments , with temperatures often dipping below zero.
And Denver is not the only impacted city. Since August 2023, more than 7.7 million people have fled Venezuela as migrants or refugees. A small fraction of them have journeyed to the Mexico-U.S. border — more than 262,000 crossed into the U.S. as of November of this year — and even this number has overwhelmed our response systems, especially in Denver , Chicago , and New York .
Since learning about the crisis, I have joined a network of thousands of concerned neighbors across Denver who are working together, informally, organically, to support these newcomers.