After several days of camping on the street and relieving herself outside, Herrera began to itch uncontrollably with an infection. She worried: Would it imperil her baby?
She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.
Days after she was forced to leave the Microtel, Denver paused its policy and allowed homeless immigrants to stay in its shelters through the winter. Denver officials say they visited encampments to urge homeless migrants to come back inside. But they didn’t venture outside the city limits to Aurora.
As Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, on Denver’s eastern edge, is a place where officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.
In fact, former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.
The doctors treated Herrera’s yeast infection and urged her to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid, a program that extends the health care benefits for poor American families to unauthorized immigrants for labor and delivery.
Herrera refused.
“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”
buddy of mine lives in aurora and he was complaining about the migrants too. The city took them in initially and offered stipends to accept migrants into housing but that money has dried up. The people got here desperate, the govt put them up for a bit, and now has absolved itself of them, leaving the citizens angry at the migrants who got sent there and are now without jobs to go to or places to stay.
They didn’t know many people who had moved to the United States, but pictures and videos of Venezuelans on Facebook and TikTok showed young, smiling families in nice clothes standing in front of new cars boasting of beautiful new lives.
I’m not one to believe that foreign disinformation campaigns contribute as much as the media would like me to. I think that a lot of USA citizens truly are as terrible as they are and want fascism without being tricked by Russia. But this sure sounds like a disinfo campaign by a foreign power.
Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real. She and her friends had developed another theory: The hype around the U.S. was part of some red de engaño, or network of deception.
Seems I’m not the only one.
In fact, former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.
Of course.
That sounds more like how people have always used social media (e.g. bragging about any accomplishments they can, hiding any difficulties they’re going through, etc.) and how US based marketers have always used American Dream bullshit to pressure people into spending themselves into debt than any kind of coordinated foreign disinfo campaign to me
Beyond that, the fact that “people can come to the US and find prosperity and stability” is a lie seems to be the bigger underlying problem here
Hmm. You’ve convinced me.
