Editors note: We have omitted the last names of all migrant individuals referenced in this story to protect their identities due to privacy concerns.
On an icy January morning, 10-year-old Camila crunched down the sidewalk in an oversized puffy coat, on her way to her east Denver elementary school. Her mind was on the day’s math test.
“It’s complicated because I have to add, subtract and multiply on paper,” she said in Spanish.
Camila and her sister Daleshka, 8, are among the thousands of newcomers who have joined Denver Public Schools this academic year after arriving from the U.S.-Mexico border. These two were lucky enough to find a school right down the street from their new apartment.
“We have one teacher who speaks two languages: Spanish and English,” Camila said proudly before giving her mom a hug goodbye and heading into class with her fellow fifth graders.
Get top headlines and KUNC reporting directly to your mailbox each week when you subscribe to In The NoCo.
The girls and their parents, Darwin and Roxana, arrived in Denver in September after a grueling three-month journey across almost 7,000 miles from their home in Venezuela. The family traveled, mostly on foot, across Panama's jungles, winding their way up through Central America and onto the searing sands of Mexico's deserts, eventually fording the Rio Grande river. They described fleeing crushing economic inflation, few job opportunities and violence in their home country. Darwin still carries bullet wounds from a gunman who confronted him as he was withdrawing his savings from a bank.
The family had a long list of reasons to leave, but the main one was the lack of basic education for their daughters.
“We arrived with a goal of improving ourselves, to get out of the poverty that we came from. And we have achieved it,” Darwin said. “In Venezuela, children don’t have access to education because of the current crisis. There isn’t anything - no pencil sharpeners, no pencils. Here, everything is different.”
Enrolling—and staying—in school is key
More than 40,000 migrants, including many families, have arrived in Denver over the last year. Now, their children need to start school, but housing is scarce and kids who don’t have a stable place to live can struggle with school. This is a pivotal moment for these kids.
Johan Liljengren, the Colorado Department of Education’s Director of Dropout Prevention and Student Re-Engagement, said establishing a pattern of regular school attendance is particularly important in early grades because it sets students up for success in the later grades.
“With students who do graduate from high school, we see a lot of different life outcomes,” Liljengren said. “Much less likely to be involved in juvenile justice. More likely to have better health outcomes. Higher earnings over the course of their lifetime.”
According to data from the Colorado Department of Education, dropout rates for unhoused and non-English speaking students are two to three times higher than the average. The department has limited data specifically on recently-arrived immigrant students.
In Colorado, Denver Public Schools (DPS) has by far the highest number of students who recently arrived from the U.S.-Mexico border, with more than 3,200 individuals arriving since last summer, but only certain schools within the district have the capacity and the resources to properly support these students. Of the district’s more than 200 schools, newly-arrived migrant students are concentrated in just a few dozen of them. This spike in enrollment has led to almost $20 million in budget shortfalls for the district over the academic year.
Esther Rivera, DPS’ liaison for housing-insecure students, works with her team to make connections with newly arrived families and guide them through the process of enrolling their children in the school system. Rivera described a long list of obstacles these families face, including language barriers, varying levels of education and fear of deportation.
“There’s some fear around immigration status, and how (enrolling) is going to impact their immigration status,” Rivera said, adding that the school system does not report people to immigration authorities. “That's not the case. We don't do that.”
Rivera said the lack of stable housing is one of the biggest barriers—and one of the main reasons—families put off enrolling their kids. Almost 4,000 new arrivals are currently staying in city shelters, but many will soon need to find other places to stay. Last month, the city re-imposed a 42-day limit on how long families can stay in shelters, a regulation expected to push thousands of people out of shelters by the end or March.
Alongside housing, finding a source of income is also a top priority for many, and directly linked to housing and education.
“Some of them choose to wait so they can first focus on getting work and then housing," Rivera said. “Then they know where they're going to be, and then they can get enrolled.”
Rivera emphasized that families can enroll their kids in school regardless of their living situations. She also said many newly arrived migrants need some of the same limited resources unhoused locals and other people suffering from housing insecurity may be seeking. That means, a lot of families slip through the cracks.
“A lot of things have to almost come together all at the same time in order for you to enroll your kid in school or get a job or get housed,” Rivera said.
The influx of migrants has also stretched Denver’s budget to a breaking point. As a result, the city has had to cut services, like staffing hours at the DMV and the operating hours at recreation centers. Mayor Mike Johnston has long criticized the federal government for its lack of support. Earlier this month, Johnston blasted Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives for derailing a bill that would have addressed the influx of migrants at the southern border, despite broad bipartisan support.
“What has now happened is we have a new policy that will intentionally make it harder for cities, states and migrants to succeed,” Johnston said. “We’ll have more folks who arrive in Denver without access to Temporary Protected Status, which means they don’t have a path to work. And we will not have any federal resources to support the $180 million in costs that we are projecting in the next year."
The state has already directed nearly $30 million in state and federal funding toward Denver’s efforts to support migrants.
The power of a stable home
One Denver shelter - a converted hotel just off of I-70 - became a hub for unhoused migrant families this winter. Most of the families there were focused on finding work and long-term housing—not getting their kids in school.
Paola arrived in Denver from Venezuela in November with her three kids, ages 2, 8 and 12.
“I want them to study, but I haven't enrolled them,” Paola said. “We don’t have a work permit nor can we get one yet."
Paola said the instability of her family's work and living situation made joining the school system seem impossible.
Most of the new arrivals speak little to no English, which not only makes learning difficult for students but also makes it hard for families to access information about support services. On top of that, migrant children have gone through an immensely difficult experience traveling to the United States, leaving their homes and everything they knew to brave a grueling journey. Now, these kids find themselves in a foreign country with few signs of familiarity.
Arlene Bjugstad has worked with immigrant children on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border as a social worker for almost two decades, and is now a professor in the department of social work at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
She said a supportive family makes a huge difference in kids’ resilience after a traumatic migration journey, like in the case of Camila's family.
“The fact that mother, father, and kids were able to stay together is probably really what is driving that resilience, and what we hope will be post-traumatic growth,” Bjugstad said.
According to Bjugstad, immigrant children, especially first generation immigrant kids, generally perform very well in school as long as they have the resources and support to allow them to focus on their studies. Housing is a big part of those supports, and for many immigrants, it goes beyond just a roof over their heads.
“Often, folks will live in apartment buildings with other people who speak their language,” Bjugstad said. “They can foster this sense of belonging and not have this constant worry of, 'What is tomorrow going to look like?'”
Similarly, for Camila's family, having both daughters attend elementary school is about more than just education—it’s about stability across the board. Going to school provides a safe place for the girls’ to spend their days while parents Darwin and Roxana work long hours to support the family.
"I'm a man with two good hands and two feet," Darwin said. "And look, I already have my car. I have an apartment. My girls study. We're ok."
Like thousands of other newcomers in Colorado, however, Darwin and Roxana don’t yet have work authorization. They can only work illegally for now which means no matter how hard they work, they could lose their jobs at any moment—and with it, their family's stability.
"At first, out of desperation, I went out to sell candies, caramels, chocolates," Roxana said. "If they don't give us a (work) permit, how do they expect us to survive?"
The city of Denver recently launched an effort to help migrants apply for work authorization, but many individuals do not qualify because they did not cross the border using the current, official U.S. immigration system. The state legislature is also considering legislation that would set aside additional state funding to bolster local organizations that support migrants.
Darwin and Roxana, however, are focused on setting their girls up for success, not on immigration policy.
"We teach them that, here, we have to fight, not let ourselves fall," Roxana said. "If a door closes on you, there's another door. Knock on a thousand and one doors, until one welcomes you."
