Local nonprofit Voces Unidas and state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs have been organizing support for a group of people from Venezuela who recently arrived in Carbondale looking for work and housing.
According to Voces Unidas and Velasco, around 80 people have been living in the boat ramp parking lot near the bridge off of Highway 133 at the entrance to town for about two weeks.
Members of the group said some families are also staying at a church in Glenwood Springs.
Edwin Jesus Jimenez Martines, who is part of the group, said he and many others made the long trip from Venezuela and eventually arrived at a shelter in Denver, but they decided to leave for Carbondale when the shelter got too crowded.
Martines spoke in Spanish through interpreter Sophia Diamond Clark, who works with Representative Velasco.
“I was the first person to come and I came up here because someone called and said, ‘Hey, look, there's work up here,’” Martines said.
Martines and several other men in the group said they came here to support their families who are home in Venezuela.
“If we don’t make money here, our families aren’t going to eat in Venezuela,” Martines said. “Two weeks of work here and we’re feeding our families and sending people to get medical attention back at home.”
The Latine-led organization Voces Unidas and Rep. Velasco held their first meeting near the bridge with a group of about three dozen people on Sunday night.
As a way to better understand the challenges they’re facing and how to help them, volunteers like local resident Junior Ortega helped hand out a questionnaire for people to fill out with their name, age and other information.
“We're just here trying to figure out what's going on, what hasn't been done and what could be done,” Ortega said. “We’re having them fill out, you know, ‘How long have you been here? Have you been reached out to by any other organization? Do you need a job, a place to stay, food, clothes?”
Martines said he and others have received some support from local churches and they’ve had some success finding jobs.
When it comes to a place to stay though, he said rent is too high, but a few of their employers have lent them cars to sleep in.
Martines said they’ve been warned by police that they can’t stay in the boat ramp parking lot near the Carbondale bridge, even though they don’t have anywhere else to go.
Voces Unidas Executive Director Alex Sanchez reached out to the town of Carbondale on Sunday about providing support to the group rather than kicking them out.
“We need to start a rapid response team and start to convene,” he said. “Where are the nonprofits and government services that deal with emergency response and direct aid for housing? Where are the nonprofits that serve food to individuals that are unhoused? Where's the nonprofits and the counties that are supposed to place kids in schools?”
Sanchez also sent an email to Carbondale’s Chief of Police Kirk Wilson on Sunday morning asking that no police be present during the organization’s meeting at the bridge later that day to avoid creating an atmosphere of fear, but officers showed up at the start of the meeting.
Chief Wilson said he was off duty on Sunday and his officers were not aware of the request at the time, but he said his department has since been briefed on the situation.
“Since we know something's going on there and we were asked not to go down there, I asked them to avoid the area unless we receive a call for service,” he said.
According to Wilson, his department did receive a call around 1 a.m. on Saturday after a member of the group was stabbed and was seen walking along Highway 133. He said the injured man was transported to Valley View Hospital and two other men in the group were arrested.
Wilson and Carbondale Mayor Ben Bohmfalk confirmed Sunday night that they’re open to starting a dialogue with the group from Venezuela to find a path forward.
Bohmfalk worries that helping people find stability and housing could be a challenge in a small town, but he’s hopeful that the community will step up.
“The people of Carbondale always want to approach things with compassion and with goodwill,” he said. “I would imagine that our community will probably rally just like we've read about other communities around the country to try to help people find the services and things that they need.”
Carbondale officials have agreed to attend a meeting with the group facilitated by Voces Unidas and Representative Velasco’s office on Wednesday at the Third Street Center.
The organizers are also helping plan a meeting with local nonprofits and social service groups Tuesday night at 6 p.m.
Sanchez said they’ve been working with the group to form a committee and identify what kind of support would be most helpful ahead of both meetings this week.
“What’s most important is that humans who have agency and power are at the table with these authorities so that these nonprofits and government entities are not assuming what they need and want, they can speak for themselves, let them,” he said.
For his part, Martines is grateful that Voces Unidas, Velasco, and a representative from Sen. John Hickenlooper’s office showed up to meet them in person on Sunday night.
“We really hope that this initiative is going to see some results and that we’re going to be able to take some action.”
Another member of the group, Rafael Peña, said he and others are hoping to be granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) by the federal government so that they can legally work. TPS is a temporary immigration status provided to people from certain countries, where challenges make it difficult or unsafe for people to return.
“The majority of us have immigration paperwork, we have court dates, but they're not until next year,” Peña said. “And so we urgently need that work permit, we need TPS.”
Velasco said this will be one of the topics they’ll discuss with nonprofit and government leaders at this week’s meetings.
“They definitely need legal counsel and we're going to see what that capacity is here in the valley, and we're also working on it at the state level,” she said. “Our businesses are hiring, the state is hiring and they're here to work, and we want to make sure that we're supporting them.”
Velasco and other state lawmakers are also working on increasing funding and resources to help migrants arriving in Colorado.
“We have had briefings about the influx of Venezuelan migrants to the state since last year and Denver has already processed about 26,000 people,” she said. “This is a national crisis, you know, there are migrants being bused from Texas and other places to different states.”
Despite the massive scale of the issue, Velasco remains optimistic that the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys will rise to the occasion.
“These migrants are staying in Carbondale, but they're working in Aspen and they're working in Vail and they're working all over the region as we do, and I really hope that we can come together to respond to this crisis and support them as they arrive,” she said.
