No one seems to know exactly how a remote mountain town like Carbondale became the destination for upwards of 150 mostly Venezuelan immigrants in search of the American dream.

The “newcomers,” as they’re called in the Aspen bedroom community, originally arrived in Denver aboard buses from the Texas border, where they had illegally crossed from Mexico.

It’s possible that one of the immigrants found a job in Carbondale, told his friends about it, who then told their friends, according to state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, D- Glenwood Springs, who interviewed them. They told her that they “were looking for opportunities in rural areas.”

Town Manager Lauren Gister said information about Carbondale spread like the old game of telephone.

“There is work here, they were correct,” she said. “But the problem is, who was going to tell these newcomers that it’s a lot colder in Carbondale than it is in Denver, and the other thing is, even with a good income, people can’t afford to live up here?”

According to the local real estate company AmoreRealty.com, a studio apartment in Carbondale costs $2,500 per month to rent. Those prices are doubled in Aspen, just 30 minutes south on Highway 82.

This is a story of how the people of Carbondale — which is not a “sanctuary” city — found itself scrambling to provide food, shelter and jobs to a wave of immigrants who arrived on their town’s doorstep, many in shorts and sandals, just before Thanksgiving.

A community under the bridge

In early November, town folk were shocked to discover that about 80 refugees were living in tents and in cars under a bridge over the Roaring Fork River.

Most of the men didn’t speak English, did not have driver’s licenses, and did not have proper work documentation. Seventy percent of them who came to the United States hope to qualify for temporary protected status; some are under humanitarian parole; a few are asylum seekers; and, a couple would be considered unqualified to work or are undocumented, according to town leaders.

The cars they drove through the mountains were cheap and bought by pooling their money. Carbondale Police Chief Kirk Wilson confirmed that some of the vehicles had fake license plates, while others had no plates at all. Some immigrants had not bought insurance.

“We have shared with them the importance of insurance and how it protects their interests and the interests of other motorists,” he told The Denver Gazette.

With winter settling in, town trustees decided to find shelter for 100 newcomers to get them out of the cold. In the meantime, Third Street Center officials opened their community rooms as a shelter for 60 people.

“They were piling up four-and-five in a car to stay warm. The priority for the board was life safety, regardless of liberal versus conservative politics, and to treat them with respect,” said Gister, a former Marine who has been Carbondale’s town manager for two years. “Carbondale is only two square miles. There aren’t a lot of buildings. We don’t have a bunch of empty motels. We tag-teamed it, beating the bushes to provide space for people.”

Temperatures dipped into the teens, but the refugees kept coming.

“The town has zero infrastructure and no shelter. We didn’t know how we were going to do it, but we were not going to let anybody freeze in their cars or on the ground. No one is dying on our watch,” said Niki Delko, a former psychotherapist who found herself coordinating a warm clothing drive.

A pile of donated coats accumulated by nonprofits was so big that the town had to rent a separate storage unit just for clothing.

Age-Friendly Carbondale, the Aspen Jewish Congregation, Two-Rivers Unitarian Universalist Congregation and the larger faith community provided warm meals. As did Food Bank of the Rockies.

Carbondale police provided educational meetings to answer questions about American laws — for example the difference between private and public property.

Families with children were housed in motels, and the kids were enrolled in school.

A COVID-19 outbreak at the Third Street Center was tackled by La Clínica del Pueblo, which is housed there. It rallied multiple agencies when one immigrant tested positive for the virus. Voces Unidas isolated him in a hotel, Garfield County Public Health provided testing for all the immigrants, and a vaccination clinic was set for the next day.

Though some of the immigrants were vaccinated, public health stepped in to provide vaccines to those who weren’t. There have been no new cases in two weeks.

Stretched to the limit

As 2024 gets closer, the town of Carbondale is tapped.

Normally, only eight to 10 homeless people live in Carbondale, but the South American newcomers increased that number by 500-800%. Suddenly, 2% of the town’s population had no place to live.

Unable to sustain the influx with services, Carbondale town managers decided this week to open two extra shelters — a church and a large meeting room in the town hall which will be divided in half by a wall so that the municipality can get work done during the day.

The plan is to keep these two shelters open for 40 people until April 1.

The parking lot of the Third Street Center will provide space for many of the immigrants to live out of their cars, but the building will no longer shelter them past January.

The actions have not been without critics, who wonder why so much energy and resources are going toward uninvited visitors.

Lynn Kirchner, a Carbondale business owner and realtor who also runs Carbondale Homeless Assistance, does not want the town’s existing homeless population and individuals on the edge of losing their homes to go ignored.

“We’ve all done what we thought was best at the time. No one did anything wrong,” Kirchner said. “But what about our existing homeless and almost homeless? They need coats, and continued attention, too. All of a sudden, the Venezuelans got the attention because of their numbers.”

State money coming in

Earlier this month, the Carbondale Board of Trustees approved a request for an emergency grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs for $223,880. The money will be used for housing services, ground transportation and to hire two full-time and one part-time position for people to coordinate shelter, according to a request letter written by Mayor Ben Bohmfalk.

Last week, the state Joint Budget Committee approved an interim $5 million supplement to the Department of Public Safety to support immigrants who have recently arrived in Colorado. The money is not specifically targeted for Garfield County, but Carbondale will see some of those funds.

Velasco said that some of the “new neighbors” who are shoveling snow and doing ranch work for cash are electrical and mechanical engineers.

“There was urgency. These are hard-working people who should not be sleeping outside in the winter,” said Velasco.

Some of the immigrants whom Velasco met were part of the Venezuelan armed forces and identified as LGBTQ who fled persecution from the government for being gay.

Denver connection

Like many of the more than 34,000 immigrants who showed up in Denver, Carbondale’s influx started with their journey from Venezuela and Columbia and ended up at the southern U.S. border after illegally crossing from Mexico. They were then bused to Denver.

An astounding 105 buses arrived in Denver in December alone.

Jon Ewing, spokesperson for Denver Human Services, said the city has never had so many people in shelters — which is now double the 2,000 immigrants who arrived last January.

“This last stretch has been extremely difficult because it’s the holidays, because of the cold and the high arrival numbers,” Ewing said, adding that the city is now operating seven shelters and stressing that this is not a permanent solution. “We’re letting people know that we can run out of space.”

Denver has purchased bus, plane and train tickets for about half of the 34,300 immigrants who have made their way to The Mile High City in the past 12 months. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the other 55% are staying in Denver, Ewing said.

Denver Human Services has been managing the humanitarian response for the city since lifting the emergency declarations.

Early in the humanitarian crisis, city officials decided to provide transportation to immigrants seeking to embark on their new life in the U.S. elsewhere.

The response has been enormously costly.

To date, Denver has spent more than $36 million to feed, clothe and temporarily house these new arrivals. The bulk of the expense has fallen on Denver taxpayers, despite state and federal grants totaling more than $14.1 million.

It was last December that 90 immigrants were dropped off downtown at Union Station and left to wander around in the cold. The city has since seen multiple waves of arriving immigrants, mostly from South and Central America.

The flood of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border pouring into El Paso, Texas illustrates the crisis that is spilling into America’s interior cities.

Even for those with a pathway to legally reside in the U.S., the wait to receive work authorization can take months.

But because housing is only temporary for families and two weeks for single adults, many opt to work as day laborers in the underground workforce.

Day laborers told The Denver Gazette recently that the influx of immigrants has driven down the amount they can earn.

Jesus Martinez said in Spanish, with an uncomfortable laugh, that he doesn’t want others to come “because there’s no more work.”

Originally from Durango, Mexico, the 35-year-old has picked up a myriad of odd jobs — cleaning houses, construction, yard work — to earn money.

“Many people are leaving (Denver) because they can’t find work,” Martinez said.

Future plans for the town that started from scratch

Carbondale residents like to gauge the way they handled their humanitarian crisis to the way Martha’s Vineyard treated the 50 immigrants sheltered by a local church for two days and then moved to the mainland. They had been bused to the island in September of 2022 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Tiny Carbondale is still standing by its at-least 100 newcomers at 50 days and counting — at least until April.

“What do you do with them? That’s the question,” said Kirchner.

“They’re human beings. They’re not without stories.”