“Every 72 hours migrants on the streets would become arrestable, deportable:” Local organizer critiques mayor’s latest plan

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston created a how-to guide for cities welcoming new immigrants. The guide has been distributed to other cities, dubbed the Newcomers Playbook. Johnston’s office described his city as “the national leader on this topic,” in a statement, according to Denverite.

Johnston added that QUOTE “Over the last year and a half, despite the federal government failing to support our cities, Denver has led by building sustainable systems that help newcomers get back on their feet and turning a crisis into opportunity.”

Johnston has admitted that the city’s initial response to new immigrants was not sustainable, and councilmembers have expressed concerns about communication efforts and those ineligible for the program.

V Reeves, an organizer with Housekeys Action Network Denver, also known as HAND, joined KGNU’s Jackie Sedley to discuss the new “playbook,” as well as Johnston’s overall efforts when it comes to aiding new migrants.

I think basically when you have all these factors compiled together we’re basically saying that this program is virtually non-existent,” Reeves said. “You’re putting all these barriers that are, again, insurmountable for these folks – let alone for the average person – and you’re, you’re basically saying that in order to qualify for employment and housing support, you have to already have stable employment and housing. So, we haven’t been able to get any direct answers on why that is. We’ve, we’ve had conversations with the city about this and they seem as though they don’t understand or that they’re unaware that migrants are being told that this is how they get into the program.”

“The fact that this program is only going to serve a thousand people. And after that, everybody else gets up to three days of shelter, something that we’ve already seen people be straight out denied,” Reeves added. “Some people receive zero days of shelter. If this were to be a national model, the result would be that every 72 hours migrants on the streets would become arrestable, deportable, and would have no safe place to exist. And so, I, I think it’s highly questionable that we should have it here, let alone anywhere else in the U. S., and I think it’s pretty deplorable to see that a place that’s claiming to be friendly to migrants and understand the importance of having migrants in our community is able to treat them in such a deplorable way.”

Listen:

Transcript:

Jackie Sedley: 8:11 on listener-supported KGNU. This is the Morning Magazine. I’m Jackie Sedley. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston created a how to guide for cities welcoming new immigrants. The guide has been distributed to other cities. It’s dubbed the Newcomers Playbook. Johnston’s office described his city as the national leader on this topic in a statement that’s according to Denverite. Johnston added that quote “Over the last year and a half, despite the federal government failing to support our cities, Denver has led by building sustainable systems that help newcomers get back on their feet and turning a crisis into an opportunity.”

Johnston has admitted that the city’s initial response to new immigrants was not sustainable, and council members have expressed concerns about communication efforts and those ineligible for the program. Here to talk about this new Playbook, as well as Johnston’s overall efforts when it comes to aiding new immigrants, is V Reeves.

They’re an organizer with House Keys Action Network Denver, also known as HAND, and they’ve been on KGNU’s airwaves more than once before, including yesterday during A Public Affair for a roundtable discussion between V, an advocate for the unhoused from NYC, and another from Los Angeles. V, thanks for joining us this morning.

V Reeves: Thank you for having me.

Sedley: So, let’s dive right into this playbook. What is this exactly?

Reeves: So, on April 10th, Mayor Mike Johnston announced a new plan for migrants coming to Denver that you know, started off with a lot of language surrounding the importance of migrants, the history of migrants coming to the U. S. The idea that a lot of folks are escaping violent persecution in their home countries which are all very important statements, and then he followed it up with the actual specifications of the plan, which included for a thousand people, six months of of housing and employment support. And then for any newcomers after that, only three days of sheltering, which was a severe reduction from the 14 to 42 days of sheltering offered before.

Sedley: Sorry, we lost you there at the second, but I think we got your whole, your whole statement. So, how has the playbook affected what you’re seeing on the streets through your work with HAND?

Reeves: So, initially there was already a lot of concern surrounding this. The idea that this program was supposed to only be supporting a thousand migrants, when we can have up to a thousand migrants coming to Denver in one week. This was clearly going to be a drop in the bucket. It wasn’t an initiative that was going to support folks long-term. It wasn’t an initiative that was going to support, you know, the majority of people coming to Denver. And it did feel very short-sighted. It felt as though the six months of support was not going to be sufficient. These are, are people who are up against legal the legal immigration process, which can take a lot longer for a lot of folks.And then the three days of sheltering was incredibly disturbing. It felt like an afterthought. It’s not like three days of shelter can be enough for anybody to find real stability or to be able to connect in the community, let alone understand the channels available to them, the opportunities available.

So, already there was a lot of concern. Now what we’ve seen in practice is that the six month program is actually not being offered widely to anybody. If anything, it turns out that there’s only enough funding for around one, potentially two months of support. And there have not been funding resources allocated yet to support the full six months.

So it feels a bit short-sighted that he would have announced this entire program without having secured anything to ensure that this program would continue for six months. That being said, we also have documentation from many migrants who have sent in screenshots of messages directly from the housing partners, the program partners that the city’s working with, particularly Vida Wellness. And these screenshots show that to get into the six month program, there’s a whole lot of requirements that are insurmountable, and also seem as though they would make it redundant to even be part of the program because they would suggest that somebody was already pretty stable.

So, I’m just going to pull up real quick to be able to refer to that message. One second. So, as for the requirements:

1. The first requirement regards which shelter they’re staying in. So this program hasn’t been offered widely across the different micro shelters. It’s been primarily offered at one family shelter, leaving hundreds of individuals without ever being able to qualify for the program.
2. The next qualifier is the name and ages of everyone.
3. The third one is a employment verification letter. So basically, they’re suggesting that in order to get into this program, for employment support, you’d have to have an employment verification letter of stable employment. You have individuals who are going around and getting odd jobs to be able to make do, things like cleaning homes, you know, not necessarily the most stable employment, but it’s something where they are able to earn some income, and even those individuals are not qualifying. When we had a meeting with the Director of Economic Development and Opportunities, he’s supposedly going to be heavily involved in the workforce aspect and the workforce training aspect of the six month program, and he had zero idea that they were requiring verifiable fixed employment in order to qualify for this program. So there’s a lot of dissonance between the different groups that are supposedly part of this program as well. And a lot of folks who have no idea what migrants are being put up against.
4. Another qualifier is that they need to have been already evicted from the shelter or have a letter that’s stating their date of exit.
5. Even this documentation is not being given when a lot of migrants are leaving. A lot of them get kicked out prematurely. A lot of them don’t understand the reasons why they’ve been dismissed before their allotted timeframe.
6. Another requirement is ID cards. This is something that migrants a lot of folks don’t have them because they had to travel often by foot across eight different countries to get to the U. S. And in that process, having to go through the Darien Jungle and being put against all odds they have lost their ID cards. There are also reports that some border patrol have actually taken people’s passports and cut them up or refuse to give them back to folks. So, ID cards are something that are hard to come by. So requiring that is another barrier, which the Director of Economic Development was surprised to learn about.
7. And the final one is perhaps the most ridiculous of all of them. It’s a lease contract that’s signed by everybody in the family. So in order to enter this program, again, for employment and housing support, you have to already have a lease, have done the work to, to source your housing, probably have gone through some kind of background check or, or gone under some kind of scrutiny in order to get it. Somehow understand the language, usually a lot of the lease contracts are in English and these folks don’t speak English, and have it signed by everybody before having any kind of assuredness that you’d receive any kind of rental assistance.

So, all of those requirements are things that we’re incredibly, you know, disturbed to see happening. We’re, we’re disturbed to see that this is the process folks are being put up against. It’s resulting in a lot of people trying to find ways around the system. And, and a lot of disappointment in finding out that even if they’re asylum seekers, when they mention this program, they’re either told that they don’t qualify it’s not an option for them, or in some cases, some migrant shelters don’t even know about Mayor Johnson’s new plan at all, and they say basically that it has no effect on the protocol that they’ve had since now. So, so yeah, so I, I think basically when you have all these factors compiled together we’re basically saying that this program is virtually non-existent. You’re putting all these barriers that are, again, insurmountable for these folks – let alone for the average person – and you’re, you’re basically saying that in order to qualify for employment and housing support, you have to already have stable employment and housing. So, we haven’t been able to get any direct answers on why that is. We’ve, we’ve had conversations with the city about this and they seem as though they don’t understand or that they’re unaware that migrants are being told that this is how they get into the program. And so with that I think a huge concern is there seem to be a lot of different parties or elements or agencies involved in Mayor Johnson’s new plan that are not communicating well between them and that are being given limited information in order to do a limited aspect of the program.

But it’s resulting in this program not serving anybody that it was intended to serve.

Sedley: And we have just about 15 seconds. I just wanted to quickly ask, what is the general feeling that comes up when you hear Johnston passing this on to other cities and saying that Denver is a national leader on this topic? Just about 15 seconds.

Reeves: Even if he were to, for example the fact that this program is only going to serve a thousand people. And after that, everybody else gets up to three days of shelter, something that we’ve already seen people be straight out denied. Some people receive zero days of shelter. If this were to be a national model, the result would be that every 72 hours migrants on the streets would become arrestable, deportable, and would have no safe place to exist.

And so, I, I think it’s highly questionable that we should have it here, let alone anywhere else in the U. S., and I think it’s pretty deplorable to see that a place that’s claiming to be friendly to migrants and understand the importance of having migrants in our community is able to treat them in such a deplorable way.

Sedley: V Reeves with HouseKeys Action Network Denver, thank you so much for talking to us this morning, we appreciate it.

Reeves: Thank you. Always a joy.