A migrant dilemma in Denver

Denver was still recovering from a heavy spring storm when Maria Chavez and Adrian Rivero arrived in town. Their bus rolled in on a cloudy evening in May 2023, dropping them off near a Latino neighborhood beside Federal Boulevard. After two full days of travel, the Venezuelan couple were glad for the chance to get out and move.

They had been in the United States for only a week, but Denver was their third American city. After crossing the border in El Paso,Texas, they had taken a bus to New York, where a friend had promised they’d be able to find jobs and an apartment. These assurances turned out to be wrong. The couple stayed at a shelter near Madison Square Garden and spent several days roaming Manhattan, looking for food pantries and work. Most people they encountered seemed curt, if not bigoted. Someone at a church suggested they try Denver instead; she thought they might have an easier time there.

They immediately felt more at ease in the Colorado city than they had in months. Denver seemed lively but not hectic like New York. “Tranquilo” is how Chavez describes her first impression to The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Baffler. (Names and other identifying details have been changed.) They had no friends in town, no tips about where to spend their first night. But finding Spanish speakers was easy. A stranger told them about a Spanish-speaking church that rented out bunk beds. It took them several hours to find the place, but when they arrived sometime after midnight, they were welcomed inside.

Chavez and Rivero had left their homes in rural Venezuela because they feared for their lives. Rivero had become a target because of his involvement in protests against Nicolás Maduro’s government; Chavez was fleeing police persecution. They were the kind of people President Joe Biden had described on the campaign trail in 2019 when he called for the United States to accept more refugees. “We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million,” he said during an event that year in Iowa. “The idea that a country of 330 million people cannot absorb people who are in desperate need and who are justifiably fleeing oppression is absolutely bizarre.” During a September debate, he called for a “surge” of asylum seekers to the southern border.

In 2023, that surge was happening. Chavez and Rivero say they weren’t thinking about American politics when they decided when to cross. Before approaching the border, they had spent a year in Colombia, working cash jobs and saving up. Once they had set aside $1,000, they started their passage through the Darién Gap. But tens of thousands of others were making the same journey at that time, and for them, Biden certainly played a role. His rhetoric while campaigning—if not all his policies once in office—led many to believe they’d “get a better deal” under his administration, immigration scholar Charles Kamasaki said in a phone interview. “That was just a rational thing to think.” It helped that the U.S. economy was recovering rapidly from its pandemic-era slump and that American businesses were desperate to hire.

Midway through his presidency, however, Biden was not championing these arrivals. In his 2023 State of the Union address, he briefly mentioned immigration to claim credit for increasing border security and called for a pathway to citizenship for those with temporary legal status and essential workers. Yet his administration was doing little to manage the flow of all the new arrivals: there was no plan to determine where they should go or to make sure they landed in communities with enough housing and jobs.

Much of that decision-making power had been assumed by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas. In April 2022, Abbott announced he would begin busing new migrants to the nation’s capital. He later expanded the program to include a handful of “sanctuary cities.” Though he claimed these actions were meant to relieve the strain on border communities, Abbott clearly hoped to create problems for the destination cities. In the early months of the program, when New York City’s government asked for information about when the buses would be arriving so it could prepare, his administration refused. Like Chavez and Rivero, the migrants who boarded these buses were given a choice about where they’d be taken—but the options were limited to only a few cities. By the spring of 2023, shelters in New York and Chicago had run out of space, and immigrants were sleeping in airports and police stations and on the streets. If the idea was to create chaos and discredit the Democratic Party, the plan was working.

Although Denver was not among the first cities singled out by Abbott, it seems in hindsight like an obvious target. Over the past 20 years, the city has done a lot to earn the designation of a sanctuary. The population is largely made up of affluent white liberals, but Hispanics (mainly Mexicans) account for more than a quarter of residents. In the 1990s, this latter group launched an organizing campaign that would eventually reshape immigration policies at the municipal and state levels. In 2013, with Denver’s legislators leading the way, Colorado became one of the first states to let undocumented people obtain driver’s licenses and qualify for in-state tuition. Later, during Trump’s first term, the city and state also banned their police officers from working with ICE and refused to let the agency hold people in local jails. Only a few other states, including New York and California, have equally stringent protections.

While the immigration advocates interviewed in Denver are proud of these laws, some stressed that politicians shouldn’t get too much credit. “We forced the city to recognize the humanity of immigrants,” said Hans Meyer, one of Denver’s most respected immigration attorneys, who has helped to write some of this legislation at both the city and state levels. “And then we forced the city to pass laws reflecting the will of the voters.”

Those ideals were about to be tested. Denver soon found itself dealing with a larger influx of migrants, on a per capita basis, than any other city in the United States. Despite Biden’s promises only a few years prior, Denver’s appeals for federal help would be met mostly with silence.

Forced Busing

On May 18, 2023, within a week of Chavez and Rivero’s arrival, a bus chartered by the Texas government dropped off its migrant passengers at Civic Center Park, an elegantly designed mall between the state capitol and city hall. It was the political equivalent of a poke in Denver’s eye by Abbott’s administration. In the weeks that followed, scores of additional buses arrived from Texas, bringing the figures to two hundred immigrants a day. The national press, preoccupied with the influx in New York City, barely took notice.

Abbott’s policies were not the only factor in this surge. Word was spreading among Venezuelans, through social media and word of mouth, that Denver had work opportunities. The local economy was booming, and even with the minimum wage set at $17.29 an hour, businesses were desperate for more workers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce would report later that summer that Colorado had at least two jobs for every person seeking employment.

The mayor in office was Michael Hancock, a business-friendly Democrat rounding out his third (and final) term. To house all the migrants, Hancock’s administration converted recreation centers into shelters and leased entire hotels. Conditions grew cramped—but still, from the perspective of the migrants interviewed, it wasn’t necessarily a crisis. Thousands received free or very cheap medical treatment, ranging from basic vaccines to critical surgeries, from Denver Health, the city’s safety-net health care system. Despite the tight market, nonprofits and churches found ways to supply longer-term housing, providing cash assistance and recruiting volunteers who had extra rooms in their houses. For migrants who wanted to move somewhere else, usually to reunite with family or friends, the city paid for bus or plane tickets.

At the same time, the promise of jobs was turning out to be a chimera. Due to federal laws, a large share of Venezuelans could only get work permits if they applied for asylum—a complicated process, requiring help from an attorney, which can cost $5,000 or more. Even in the best-case scenario, it takes another six months, after applying, to become eligible for a work permit. This delay is written into law and could be eliminated only by an act of Congress. Biden created some workarounds: granting Temporary Protective Status to 600,000 Venezuelans and allowing others to schedule appointments by mobile app with immigration officials at the border. While either of these pathways allowed migrants in theory to skip the waiting period for work permits, there was a massive backlog in processing, and many Venezuelans were still arriving in Denver and other cities with no paperwork at all.

For Chavez and Rivero, making rent during their first month was a struggle. The Spanish-speaking church charged them each $150 a week. In a town where studio apartments can be found for under $1,000, it’s hard to deny they were being exploited by their landlords—an increasingly common scenario for migrants. Following other Venezuelans’ lead, they started spending their days in the parking lot of a Home Depot, hoping to be hired for day jobs. Occasionally someone would offer Chavez a few hours’ worth of house cleaning, or Rivero would be picked up for a remodeling project. But many days they simply stood in the sun, hour after hour, waiting.

Meanwhile, the local government’s resources were becoming strained. On average, Denver was spending at least $800 a week on each person who needed housing. By June, it was looking at $20 million in costs it hadn’t budgeted for. In his public addresses, Hancock was downcast about the whole matter. “We are in a state of emergency,” he said in a press conference that spring. But he was careful not to blame the migrants, directing his anger toward the federal government instead.

It’s not a stretch to suggest Biden could have staved off these problems—because, in fact, he almost did. During the summer of 2022, in a barely noticed story, NBC News reported on a plan by the Department of Homeland Security to take over decisions about where migrants would be sent. By distributing the flow among a larger number of cities, coordinating with shelters in advance to make sure they had capacity, and providing the shelters with extra funds, the administration could have prevented overcrowding. At this point, DHS was already in contact with shelters in Los Angeles; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Houston; and Dallas, among other cities. However, the agency stressed to NBC that it had not decided whether to go through with this project.

Such an approach might have played well with voters. The year Biden was elected, a record 77 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll said immigration was a good thing, and more than a third thought the current levels should be increased. Moreover, during those early days of Biden’s presidency, the labor market was tighter than it had been in decades, with business owners grousing that “no one wants to work.” A federal initiative to help asylum seekers join the workforce—with full legal status, so they wouldn’t undercut other workers’ wages—could have benefited everyone. Biden’s administration had also demonstrated that it was capable of running such an operation. Under the Uniting for Ukraine program, launched in 2022, the government welcomed at least 240,000 Ukrainians who had been displaced by their country’s war with Russia. It worked with nonprofits to place them in specific communities and provide them with housing and job training. The program was almost universally considered a success.

But that was Ukraine. For Democrats, dealing with Latin American immigration proactively would have been distinctly out of character. “In general,” Kamasaki told me, “Democrats think immigration is a losing issue.” Over the years, he said, Democratic politicians and consultants have told him, “Any day we don’t talk about immigration is a good day”—a notion dating back at least as far as George W. Bush’s presidency. If the Democrats call for restrictive policies, the thinking goes, they’ll alienate left-leaning members of their coalition (and, at least historically, many of their Latino constituents); if they call for looser immigration policies, they risk losing moderates to the GOP. Reverting to this pattern, Biden ultimately did not implement the intake program, ceding immigration policy to Republicans like Abbott.

Into Thin Air

In July 2023, Mike Johnston, 48, a former state senator, took the stage at Denver’s opera house. Before a packed crowd, Johnston raised his hand and swore an oath, promising to serve with integrity as Denver’s next mayor. The son of a former mayor of Vail, Colorado, Johnston had carved a path through the center of the field: In the election’s first round, he came out ahead of 15 other candidates, including two who ran solidly to his left; and in the runoff, with the support of two out-of-state billionaires in Michael Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman, he defeated a more conservative candidate, the former head of a business-lobbying group.

When he took to the microphone, Johnston was met with a standing ovation. “I haven’t done anything yet!” he said with a laugh. “Just starting.”

He kept his remarks brief. Denverites were facing hardships, he said: drug addiction, poverty, anxiety over school shootings. Instead of detailing how his policies would address these problems, he appealed to general notions of solidarity. “Our dream of Denver,” he said, “is that when you land at your lowest, without a job or a place to stay, shackled by addiction or struggling with mental illness, we will not judge you or abandon you. We will not give up on you. We will get you a home. We will get you help.”

Johnston’s chief campaign promise had been to end homelessness in Denver within a single term. It was already clear that he might have to sideline this project and make the Venezuelan migrants—the “newcomers,” as he preferred to call them—his priority. Nevertheless, his rhetoric of inclusivity clearly resonated with Denverites, suggesting that most had not become jaded by their experience with the immigrant surge thus far.

The flow ebbed a little that summer, but in the fall there was another influx, this one bigger than all the rest. By late September 2023, the daily average had risen to 300 people; by mid-October, despite taking out additional hotel leases, the city had run out of capacity. Every new arrival was allowed to stay in a shelter for 14 days (37 if they had children), but after that, they had to leave and make way for others. The city was still working with nonprofits to place people in longer-term housing, but there were no guarantees. Its spending on migrants had ballooned to almost $2 million a week.

Patricia, a relative of Chavez, was among this wave, alongside her spouse and two young children. Chavez and Rivero had moved into a free apartment provided by a church congregation and had scrounged money to support the relative’s journey. When the family reached Central America, Chavez mapped out the Western Union branches along their route, wiring money every few days; when they arrived in El Paso, the church in Denver paid for bus tickets to bring them to Colorado.

The young family’s early weeks in town were chaotic. In the cold weather, there weren’t many jobs to go around at Home Depot, and Patricia’s spouse struggled to bring in more than $20 or $30 a day. Most other new arrivals found themselves in the same situation. Large numbers congregated at busy intersections, where they approached drivers and offered to clean their windshields. A crew of 10 men, working 12-hour days, often made about $70 altogether. Ashley Cuber, an immigration lawyer, said she once saw four windshield washers squatting on a curb, passing around a single hot dog.

Denver was hit with its first snowstorm of the season that October. As much as eight inches of snow fell across the city, and cold winds blew in from Montana, bringing the temperature as low as 14 F. In the Jefferson Park neighborhood, a number of Venezuelans who had maxed out their time in the shelters set up tents on the roadside. As word about the encampment spread, residents started showing up with their trunks full of warm clothing; still, the refugees found themselves burning furniture for heat.

Elsewhere, the same problems were playing out on a larger scale. By the end of 2023, more than 150,000 new migrants had come to New York City, and the local government found itself facing a $12 billion budget shortfall. Chicago had received nearly 30,000 people and Massachusetts another 11,600. In all those places, the shelters were packed by late fall; tent cities proliferated, even as the temperature dropped below freezing.

After Denver’s cold snap ended, Mayor Johnston wrote a letter to the White House, requesting an “urgent meeting” with Biden. He hoped the president would ask Congress for an extra $5 billion to reimburse the city governments most affected. Johnston also called for structural remedies: new ways to fast-track work permits for these asylum seekers so that more of them would have the means to rent their own apartments; and a national resettlement program, like the one Biden had implemented for Ukrainian refugees. DHS’s short-lived resettlement plan went unmentioned, but Johnston’s description sounded similar. He recruited the mayors of America’s four largest municipalities—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston—to add their signatures.

The following week, Johnston flew to D.C., where he rendezvoused with Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago. Biden did not make himself available, but the pair were greeted by Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, and Tom Perez, a senior adviser. During a closed-door meeting, the mayors pleaded their case. Biden’s surrogates were polite but noncommittal. It seems that, by this time, the White House had decided that talking about immigration could only be a liability and was hoping the problems would go away on their own.

Instead, they only got worse. On a single day in mid-December, 341 people on nine buses arrived in Denver. The city removed its time limit on shelter stays for families and opened still more facilities. In January 2024, the number of migrants housed by the local government ballooned to 5,000. When Johnston called for mayors in other cities to help, some refused, and others ignored him. The city council of Aurora, Colorado, which borders Denver on the east, passed a resolution blocking migrants from being moved into their city boundaries. Denver Health reported that it had spent more than $30 million that year caring for immigrants who didn’t have insurance. To save money, the city government cut back hours at recreation centers and the DMV. “What we don’t want is people to arrive here at 1 a.m. in T-shirts and sandals with two young kids and end up homeless on the street in 10-degree weather,” Johnston told USA Today. “We don’t want that to happen, but we also know we can’t provide an infinite amount of services.” He blamed Congress for the problems—scared, perhaps, to attack Biden by name, even as he had already made clear the administration’s passivity.

Getting to Work

In May 2024, roughly 100 migrant men and women gathered in a hotel ballroom in Denver’s Highland neighborhood. They sat in rows of folding metal chairs, some with infants on their laps, others holding thick stacks of paperwork. Before them stood an immigration lawyer the city had recently hired. “Hola, todos!” she said with a smile. It was the first day of the Denver Asylum Seeker Program, the city government’s newest initiative. With little federal support, Johnston and his staff were taking their own measures to establish the kind of integration program they wanted to see.

Over the spring, the flow of new arrivals from Texas had slowed to a trickle, now averaging just a few dozen a day. This reflected a change below the border: The White House had prevailed on Mexico to step up its own patrolling, and crossings dropped significantly. Many of the Venezuelans who arrived in Denver in 2023 had found jobs—some hired by legitimate businesses, others getting paid in cash—and had moved into apartments, while others had left town. Roughly 800 families remained in the shelters, compared to a peak of 5,000 at the beginning of the year.

Under these conditions, the local government saw a chance to try something different. Denver had begun closing shelters and moving families into apartments. It recruited lawyers on a volunteer basis and collaborated with the Colorado Asylum Project to help the migrants apply for asylum and work permits. It brought in federal immigration officials to speed up processing. For the next six months, while these families awaited work permits, their rent and food would be paid for. Meanwhile, at least one adult from each household was required to spend twenty hours a week in WorkReady Denver, a program designed by a local nonprofit. Jon Ewing, the spokesperson for the Denver mayor’s office, described it to me as “a one-stop shop on how to live and work in the United States of America.”

About 835 migrants would join the program by the summer’s end. Part of their time was spent in English classes and resettlement courses, with lessons on everything from how to deal with American landlords to how to pay bills online and call in sick. The rest centered on job training. Career coaches interviewed them about their work experience and their ambitions. There were tracks for the service industry, construction, and childcare, fields where Denver was facing acute labor shortages.

Nationwide, this program was unmatched. Other cities provided services such as legal help and job training, but Jacob Hamburger, a law professor at Marquette University whose work focuses on the role of state and local governments in immigration, called Denver’s model the most comprehensive by far. “All the different portions of this seem to come together in the Denver program in a way they don’t anywhere else,” he said.

The program cost roughly $1,700 per person, but Denver saw this as an investment—and not without reason. A report by the state in 2018 found that 2,700 refugees had generated $611 million in new economic activity in the previous decade. It concluded that for every $1 spent in refugee services, state and local governments received $1.23 in tax revenue.

Within Denver, reactions to this program were divided. Some immigration advocates argued that the benefits that several hundred families received through the program came at the expense of other Venezuelans who were still en route to the United States or were just now crossing the border. The city government was reported to have an employee in El Paso discouraging new immigrants from coming. Johnston’s liberal critics thought the money could have been better spent by keeping the shelters open longer, which would have benefited more people. Those like Chavez and Rivero, who were no longer in the shelter system, were also ineligible.

Anything the mayor did would have required trade-offs, however, given that a city government—unlike the federal government—doesn’t have the power to print money or run a deficit. Short of establishing New Deal–type institutions to create meaningful public-sector jobs, a program like the one in Denver seemed worthy as a stopgap measure—especially for migrants wanting autonomy after depending for so long on nonprofits and public shelters. From the standpoint of political messaging, there was a case to be made for framing immigration in terms of economic benefit as well as compassion, i.e., as a means of filling jobs and reducing inflation.

Unfortunately, an approach like this had no chance of catching on at a larger scale, at least not in 2024. By the late days of Biden’s presidency, the public had shifted hard on immigration. In a Gallup poll that February, a record share of respondents—55 percent—said illegal border crossings posed a “critical threat” to the country. And that summer, for the first time in decades, a majority said they wanted to see less immigration, period. Three-quarters were in favor of hiring more border guards. (Even so, a strong majority, 70 percent, still favored a path to citizenship for people who entered the country illegally.)

The Democrats could have rejected these narratives and made a case in favor of immigration. The United States has a clear moral imperative to help people fleeing from Venezuela (and other places like it), if only because the sanctions we’ve imposed there have played a huge part in the country’s economic ruin. Granted, it’s hard to imagine the party of the Clintons and Joe Biden framing the matter in such moral terms. But Democrats also could have championed immigration as part of a plan to stave off further price increases and boost tax revenue in a year when economic inflation was at the top of voters’ minds. Instead, they fully embraced the idea that immigration was a threat and that a border crackdown was needed. In the Senate, they pushed a bill that advanced several of the GOP’s top priorities on immigration, including a $7 billion increase in ICE funding. Chuck Schumer knew Republicans would block it, but he hoped this would show voters they were hypocrites. Instead, when the legislation failed, it simply made the Democrats look like a paler shade of the GOP.

Meanwhile, the Denver area started to come up often in Trump’s rants as he campaigned that year. Late in the summer, a viral video shot in Aurora caught the former president’s attention. Filmed at The Edge at Lowry, a rundown apartment complex half a mile from Denver’s city limits, the clip showed five men carrying guns in the hallway and entering an apartment. Locally, rumors had already been swirling that the complex was overrun by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua; Fox News and other conservative media outlets seized on this story, playing the scene again and again. Trump first mentioned the clip during a town hall in September, and come October, Trump was calling his whole deportation agenda “Operation Aurora,” declaring that his promised ICE raids would begin there. In response, Johnston told local press that Denver would fight Trump in the courts if he tried to deport the city’s asylum seekers, even floating the possibility of stationing police on the county line.

In November 2024, WorkReady Denver graduated its first class. Out of roughly 330 who enrolled, almost all completed the initial phases and were successfully matched with employers, making an average of $20 an hour, according to city records. And there were others who dropped out because they found jobs earlier. But after Trump’s victory, it wasn’t clear that these graduates, or the 20,000 other Venezuelan residents who had come since 2022, would be safe from deportation under the new administration.

ICE Brigades

Trump was true to his promise about Aurora. On a cold morning in early February this year, dozens of federal agents assembled outside The Edge at Lowry. Some worked for ICE, others for the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. In a theatrical show of force, they brought armored trucks, and the agents suited up in bulletproof vests and black masks and carried assault rifles.

At 6 a.m., they set off stun grenades and burst into all five buildings at once. Banging on doors, they demanded to see residents’ IDs and immigration papers. But the officers found themselves thwarted on every floor. Groups like the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition had trained residents not to open up unless signed warrants were slipped under their doors. The agents walked back to their trucks less than an hour after their arrival without a single resident in handcuffs. Across the greater Denver area, they raided several other buildings, claiming on social media they had arrested 100 people—but they wouldn’t release details, and there was evidence that the real number was closer to 30.

Those raids established a pattern that has held ever since. Not many immigrants in Denver have actually been arrested or deported. There’s still a spirit of defiance when it comes to immigration policy. At the same time, however, everyone is understandably on edge.

The city and state’s refusal to help ICE with raids—whether by sharing the resources of their police departments, the spare beds in their jails, or the personal information in their databases—significantly curtails what ICE can achieve there. It also seems to infuriate the Trump administration, which is suing Denver on the claim that sanctuary laws are unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the federal government has withdrawn $24 million in federal grants to the city, and Tom Homan, Trump’s top border adviser, has threatened to put Johnston in jail.

In response, the mayor has tried to keep a lower profile. Since the raids early this year, he hasn’t given any interviews to the national press, and his staff declined to make him available for this story. His administration took some heat in March when a local TV station found that it had been using Signal to communicate about immigration matters, setting their messages to auto-delete.

One evening in the first week of April, when it really felt like spring in Denver, residents were taking strolls and dining outdoors, basking in the sunshine. Chavez and Rivero were inside their home. When a reporter visited, it was dim, with heavy shades drawn across the windows (a common feature at every Venezuelan home visited in town). Chavez has been resourceful about finding free furniture and decorating. Two couches lined opposite walls in the living room, and in the middle there was a coffee table with a houseplant. Children’s toys littered the floor.

While some employers have refused to recognize their work authorization, they’ve both found steady jobs, Chavez cleaning houses and Rivero in construction. When they’re not working, they stay home and bolt the locks. Crouching on the futon, Rivero kept watch for ICE agents through a small glass panel in the door. He lightened the mood by making a joke of it, cupping his hands around his eyes like binoculars.

When asked what kind of future the couple imagined for themselves and if they wanted to stay in Denver, Chavez was somber. “I am afraid of this president,” she said. She noted that she and Rivero had taken pains to go through the immigration process correctly, to follow every regulation. But she felt like the laws were shifting unpredictably. This was the case even for the 600,000 Venezuelans who received Temporary Protected Status under Biden, which Trump has been trying to revoke. Chavez couldn’t help worrying about being sent to El Salvador or Guantánamo Bay. “I don’t have hopes,” she said. “I have fears.”

Chavez is not the only person who finds it hard to look beyond the present moment. The MAGA consensus seems stronger than we thought in 2024; the Democratic Party has almost never been more feckless; any kind of post-Trump scenario seems too far off to contemplate. It’s possible, of course, that this hostility toward immigrants will cool down. From a polling standpoint, it’s an example of what political scientists call a “thermostatic issue,” said Charles Kamasaki, the immigration scholar. In a phone interview, he explained this in simple terms: “The public tends to react against whomever is in power.”

Given the way Trump’s administration is changing this country, it’s fair to wonder how attractive the United States will seem as a destination, if and when we reach the other side of this cycle. In just one week this spring, Marines were deployed against protesters in Los Angeles, the president called for the arrest of California’s governor (with the Speaker of the House adding that he should be “tarred and feathered”), and a top Democrat in Minnesota’s legislature was assassinated. Congress approved a bill that would deprive at least 11 million people of health insurance and cut food benefits for another 3 million while also driving up energy prices. The country’s credit rating has been universally downgraded, and the value of the dollar is plummeting. The American century isn’t going to be revived.

On the other hand, no matter what happens in U.S. politics, more people from Latin America will be approaching our borders in the years to come. A broad swath of Central America is on track to lose at least 10 percent of its main food crops in this decade alone. Countries from Mexico to Chile are dealing with increasingly severe water shortages. If tariffs are imposed on top of the crippling U.S. sanctions that several Latin American countries already face, economic turmoil will only worsen.

The sole response that would be sensible or humane is to embrace a positive vision of immigration, emphasizing its benefits, and to deal with migrants with realistic planning. Some combination of a resettlement scheme, modeled on what we already do for designated refugees, and an integration program, like the one piloted by Denver, would be critical components. Even if this country’s future will be less prosperous, it can certainly include a place for people who weren’t born here.

As for Rivero, despite his partner’s fears, he’s more sanguine about staying in Denver. In the best-case scenario, in a year or two he would open his own business doing woodworking or construction. Before he came to the United States, he had a couple of jobs helping to build and repair furniture, and he wants to do something similar. “The more time I’m here, the more I have hope about staying,” he said. “I think I can move forward.”

Co-published by The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Baffler.

This story was produced by The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Baffler and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.