VOLUME 60 | ISSUE 20
WEEK OF DECEMBER 21, 2023
$2
of SWEARING THEIR OATHS Number Venezuelans Northglenn greets new councilors, bids two goodbye P2
arriving in Denver is about 30,000
BY JENNIFER BROWN AND JESÚS SÁNCHEZ MELEÁN THE COLORADO SUN AND EL COMERCIO DE COLORADO
Lenny Maris Gonzalez wanted to come to the United States for her children’s sake, she explained as her youngest, 2-year-old Yaxi, scrambled to climb onto her lap beside their tent on a Denver sidewalk. On a chilly December day, the Venezuelan mother described how, after her husband died from COVID, she traveled the rest of the way to the United States from Colombia with her five children and her brother. Now they cook their meals on a tiny grill on the street, wearing donated snow boots and warming up in a tent outside the Quality Inn near the corner of Speer Boulevard and Zuni Street. “He left me with five children and I decided to migrate for a good future, for my children, for their studies,” Gonzalez said in Spanish as she sat in a plush green recliner outside the door of her tent. Around her, the street in the northwest Denver neighborhood of Highland is unrecognizable, a result of a city overwhelmed by its efforts to help the nearly 30,000 Venezuelan migrants who’ve arrived in Denver in the past year. SEE ARRIVING, P10
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