- Support for the program Humanize: Newcomers was provided in part by Rose Community Foundation and viewers like you.

(music playing) - My name is Rosemely Naimir Perez Contreras.

I am from the country of Venezuela.

My journey started from Venezuela.

I passed through the country of Colombia, the Darien jungle, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

I went through all of those countries on a three-month journey.

The situation in my country is terrible.

The other reason we left was because my family was going through a series of problems in Venezuela.

Unfortunately, due to a gang in my country, several relatives have been killed.

That is, my uncle was killed by that gang, and another uncle and another uncle.

They have attacked several relatives who have come out unscratched, but still we are already afraid.

We made the decision together to leave my country for a better future, for better well-being.

More than anything, for the children.

At least for me, it took me a while to make the decision because I knew it was a very hard trip, even more without money, and I had already seen and heard many videos of people drowning in the jungle and I would say, wow, I can't.

I would say, Lord, enlighten me.

What do I do?

Until the moment came where I said, that's it.

We're going.

And so when I was there, I saw myself there in the jungle.

I was passing through Mexico.

I said, well, I could do it.

There came a moment on the journey where I cried, I screamed.

I said, oh, my god.

What is this?

Why did I come?

What have I done?

But I was already on the way.

There was no turning back.

Out of my whole journey, the most difficult country was Mexico; insecurity and it was the longest country.

We suffered a lot of xenophobia.

Between the jungle and Mexico, Mexico was worse.

It was a horrible experience.

But as a mother, I wanted to be strong and say yes, we can do this.

And when they slept or they were resting, I would kneel down and just cry and yell, Lord, don't abandon me.

Please help me.

It was something incredibly unpleasant for us.

I mean, we don't imagine that the journey would be so long and with so many experiences together, but thanks to God, everything passed and now we are here.

We, because of the experience of being kidnapped by people in Mexico, decided when we get to the border, to hand ourselves to the immigration right away.

We did not want to wait for a CPB One appointment because we thought that would take too long and we didn't want to take any more risks.

We were scared, and unfortunately, my partner is not legally my husband and he's also not my children's birth father.

He has simply been my partner for many years, and he's the one who has raised my kids.

We consider him part of the family but immigration doesn't see it like that.

They evaluated him separately.

They separated him from me, from my kids and I left within a day.

They released me, thank God, from immigration to the U.S.

But he didn't.

He just kept getting passed by.

His process lasted approximately, almost two months and was then returned to Venezuela.

He is my partner, I mean, even if weren't married in the legal sense, he was my husband, my partner, my companion, the father of my children, and obviously, we came as a family, to have a better future.

Not having my partner by my side has been horrible.

Why horrible?

Because it's very hard.

If it's hard for couples where there's dad, mom, kids; if it's hard for two people, how must it be for a single mother?

I have my two kids.

My daughter is seven years old, my son is 12, but they're kids, kids that need food, attention, a home, a dwelling.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to get those things.

Yes, I have received help, but they still need me as a mother.

When are we going to stabilize?

When are we going to have our own things?

And I say, very soon.

And I can't show them my sadness because I don't want them to feel uncomfortable.

On the contrary, I want them to be well and say, wow, we are in the U.S.

They're getting a good education, that is what is important but it's been very difficult.

When I arrived, I got with a person.

I found her through magic.

Her name is Andrea, Andrea Ryall.

She is someone who has been a huge help to my family.

Thanks to her we got the first place where we lived.

She has a community of moms, and many people who have collaborated with that community.

And there are people who have offered to host a Venezuelan family or a family from other places in a room in their home while they search for housing.

And thanks to her, I was able to find the first family.

And from that first family, we found another family that was going on vacation and they decided to leave their home in my care.

Andrea has always been checking up with us.

What do you need?

How can I help you?

Of many organizations that there are, I have not received any help.

I have sent requests, I have sent so many things, cards, but no.

They haven't told me anything concrete.

I lost hope.

I made the decision to stop asking for help.

I won't bother anymore.

And to eat, I go to the food bank but sometimes it's a bit difficult because the food doesn't always have what one needs or what someone is used to eating.

Unfortunately, I only have a little time left where we're living.

I only have about a month left.

And unfortunately, I still haven't gotten a job.

I have no savings to say I'm going to rent as soon as I get out of here.

I don't know what to do.

I mean, for me, this moment that I'm living right now is becoming very difficult because I only think about what I'm going to do.

What am I going to do?

I mean, I don't want to go out on the street.

It must be horrible.

I understand all of those people because I know there are many people right now in the streets and it must be very, very unpleasant, and I don't want to go through that.

Yes, I'll clean a house or take care of a child.

If someone says to me, I need you to make me some Arepas because that's the Venezuelan food that's most popular right now.

But that's not all the time.

Sometimes I go weeks where I don't do any work.

I don't have work.

And that's why I say that I haven't had the opportunity to save because I haven't had a stable job.

I say that solving the issue of not being able to get work, I think that everything will be solved.

It would be good for both the country and for us because we would have work.

We'd make a living.

We want to work.

We want to earn our own money, pay our own rents, our own food, our own needs, cover them ourselves.

But they don't give us the opportunity.

It's not like in Venezuela where at least I have familiarity.

I have people I know.

Here in the United States, I've had moments where I go, I'm going to ask for deportation.

I'm leaving because I don't have family.

I don't know what to do.

And I've had moments where I've wanted to ask for deportation and everything.

But then I say, what good is it to me to go back to my country without anything?

It'll be even worse because at least here there's food banks.

They give you help, clothes, because I haven't bought my own clothes here.

I've gotten these through donations.

But in Venezuela?

No.

I simply ask the American community here in Denver that they try to understand us a bit more.

And to the government here in Denver, what I ask of them is that they help us a little more to get our work permits a little bit faster so our lives are a little easier and we can -- how do I say?

Help ourselves more, not need so much, and not have so many immigrants on the streets.

What I want most for my kids in the future here is a home, where they can be calm, and my work.

That's what I want most.

I want a stable home for us and the opportunity to work.

I want to stay here in Denver, I want to establish ourselves here in Denver and have a future here with my kids.

It's my only wish.

- I'm Stephen Wolf.

I'm the chair of Emergency Medicine at Denver Health.

I've been at Denver Health as a faculty on and off since 2002.

Like many of my colleagues, I trained there from '98 to 2002.

The training program for emergency medicine at Denver Health is outstanding.

Many say it's the best in the country.

I came out here as a student just exploring and had an incredible month of an experience and didn't look back.

I don't want to say it caught us and me by surprise.

I mean, there's always the challenge of meeting the needs of newcomers.

But the wave that came about, starting early last year, really was astonishing and overwhelming in a lot of ways for emergency medicine.

At one point in time, it was five, six, seven patients a day, and then quickly became upwards of 30 to 40 patients a day.

And I think the big challenge for our group was meeting their needs.

And that's something that our faculty, I think all of Denver Health, takes to heart, provide healthcare regardless of ability to pay, regardless of ability to get to the hospital, to have access.

We go out of our way to meet that need.

Initially, the challenges that we were facing were just simple, like being overwhelmed from a language services standpoint, and being able to effectively communicate with every patient as fluently as you and I are communicating to understand what the needs and what the concerns are.

What systems are in place to get individuals the resources they need?

Access to shelter, access to food, access to medications that were taken away for one reason or another, or lost for one reason or another.

And in the real time or in the moment when you're caring for 20, 30 other patients in the emergency department simultaneously, finding the time and the resources to dedicate to those four or five, six, gradually growing proportion of those patients became very difficult, to the point where you felt like you just weren't doing your job.

We, be it for good or not, tend to compartmentalize.

You learn it from day one of residency or training how to walk from the room of a dying grandmother into a mom and dad with their child with a cold.

And where they're furious because you've taken 30, 45 minutes to get in the room and in your mind you're like, well, I was trying to save someone's life and not to be dramatic.

But sometimes, that juxtaposition and how you finish one and you put in its compartment and you move into the next.

Every patient deserves to be approached like they're the only patient.

There are a lot of cases where you look and you're like, oh my God, that could be my mom, that could be my sister that could be my relative or friend.

Took care of one patient whose mother carried their child from Venezuela and the child had a seizure disorder and some neurologic delay.

And she carried her all the way through the Darien Gap up through the southern border and was then transported to Denver.

Lost the medications.

Her seizures became much more challenging to manage because of the gap in care.

It was a remarkable story to sit at the bedside and hear, and it was a remarkable honor and privilege to be able to be somewhat of a part of a solution.

I think there's a lot of moral or personal stress that goes with the decisions.

I guess, how you care for newcomers knowing, for instance, sometime I may write a prescription that they're not going to be able to fill to what ends, to what length can I do to get them that prescription, particularly if it's a life altering?

I don't want to say lifesaving, but prescription.

Maybe it's an anti-epileptic for seizures.

How far can I go to make sure they walk out of the emergency department with that prescription in hand?

It's incredible to work at Denver Health, where the mission is such a priority that oftentimes we're not faced with those moral challenges.

I think everyone has the right to the opportunity for stable shelter, food security, fundamental healthcare.

The policies and structures that are set up to assure that is how we can best move forward.

I don't have the solution of what those policies and procedures are, and I know that's politicized in my mind, the politicized component.

But having the reassurance that those processes in some way, shape, or form exist would be a brighter future.

I don't even know if it's the right thing to do just to funnel resources out your car window, but to humanize them by acknowledging their existence and acknowledging their struggles makes it real, and I think has impact.

One time I was literally taking my dogs for a walk, and I went out our garage, and we have a little parking lot behind it.

Came around through the alley, and there was a newcomer who had his backpack.

It was so oppressively hot, and he had his backpack, and he had a little bottle of water that had a sliver of water left.

And he was sitting in between a garbage bin and a fence of our neighbors.

So, I took a gallon of water and two peanut butter sandwiches.

I wound up using an app-based translation service just to ask him how he's doing and what he needs.

If everyone took a moment to get to know one or two people, I think they'd realize that this can't be an issue that is politicized, shouldn't be an issue that's politicized.

- Hi, my name's Andrea Ryall.

I am a local mom here in Denver.

I have a ten, an eight and a five-year-old, so I have zero extra minutes in any of my days.

But my life has been totally turned upside down by a straight up humanitarian crisis in my city.

My typical American stay-at-home mom life, and I'm now a homeschool mom, has really just crashed into humanitarian work in my own neighborhood.

There had been lots of chatter already about migrant kids being registered in local schools, and lots of local moms already stepping up for those families and trying to figure out ways to help.

And so there was this call out for a feeding event, and they wanted, if anyone can bring extra snacks, bananas, anything you can bring to supplement the meal.

It was just a Saturday, I was literally at the car wash with my kids, and we were like, let's go get bananas and take them down there.

So, we went and bought 10 bunches of bananas.

And for the first time in my life, we went down to a homeless shelter.

It was new for me, so we went down there, and we drove around.

I couldn't figure out why it was a hotel and I didn't see anyone.

There was no sign outside that said, this is a homeless shelter.

There was a lot of kids and adults, clearly Venezuelan or South American, Central American in this parking lot.

And my kids were like, come on, mom, let's just pull over and hand out bananas.

And so that's what we did.

My little kids handed bananas to little kids their own age who were running around this parking lot with many no shoes, lot of shorts and flip flops in Colorado winter.

The bananas were gone instantly, and everyone was kind and gracious.

At no point did I feel intimidated or scared in any way, and everyone was asking for work.

Everyone just wanted a connection to a way to care for themselves.

We just realized in that moment that they needed way more than bananas.

And so I reached out back out to my local moms group and shared my experience, and it just exploded.

The movement just, it exploded.

Within four days, we had a thousand people on our Facebook group ready and willing to help, and literally doing the exact same thing, buying bananas, granola bars, making lunch, going down there themselves, and making connections.

I was waking up every morning to new messages in my WhatsApp from moms who just wanted ways to take care of their kids and wanted connection to resources.

And they just needed a little help to be able to get to the point where they could care for themselves.

So, here we are six months later still doing this work.

Our movement has up over 8,000 people on it dedicated to helping.

What I've come to learn is that there's no savior here, not for this population.

They don't have access to anything federally funded.

They can't get on the bus for free.

They weren't let in with rights to work.

They don't have a way to work and feed themselves in this moment.

They need help.

And I didn't know that before.

I always thought someone else was taking care of it, and I didn't know.

And I thought a lot about why did I stop that day to get out of my car with my kids and hand out bananas?

What was it that was different that day?

And I think part of it is it was really a lot of moms just like me with their own kids that I saw who needed help.

I could see myself in them and them in me that I would be doing what they're doing if I were them.

This is a global issue.

This is not just a U.S. challenge.

Immigration in this country, we can all agree is broken.

And many of the ways our system's set up is meant to be a deterrent, but it's not working.

And there are vulnerable people in my community right now, and I can do something about it.

And my community has risen up and said, we want to do something about this.

We care.

This is moms and little kids for us.

It's moms with little kids looking at moms with little kids and saying, we have some ideas for you.

We have some ways that we can get you to a point where you can care for them.

That's all that this is.

This is me personally really believing that no matter where I find myself on this planet, I want the ability to work and feed myself and my children.

This is humanity.

The UN views rights to work as a human right.

Over 40,000 people have hit Denver in the last year who don't have a clear pathway or a right to work, and that creates dependence and other darker sides of our society to be fueled, and it makes my city less safe for my kids.

I want to have a system that works.

I want a population of people who want to come and increase our economy to have the ability to do so.

I want our community to thrive.

This is a moment of prosperity for all of us if we do it right.

This isn't, should we open or close the border, or should they be here or not?

This is, they're here and they want to work and contribute.

They want to take care of themselves.

They don't want millions and millions of dollars spent on them.

They don't even want the boots I offer them or the coats.

The amount of times I've had to push basic necessities on people who just want to work.

This is a moment that we're getting wrong and the moms in my community are not having it.

We don't want kids sleeping in tents in our streets, not with parents who want to work.

And there's a whole generation of children who are watching their moms and their dads do this work and who are doing it themselves too, and gives me so much hope for what the city is going to look like in 10 years, 20 years.

This is the city my kids have to grow up in, and I'm going to take a stand for it.

Fear of the other just breeds into more fear until you have a face-to-face interaction with another human being.

And so I would encourage anyone who is functioning out of fear or assumptions, go serve a meal down at the shelter.

Go on a Sunday morning service to one of the many churches who have stepped up and have Spanish service now.

Talk to the guy who's trying to clean your windshield or the lady with her little kid trying to sell you a flower on the corner.

Talk to them.

I do it with my children.

It is not scary.

So many of the men who are here alone, who I would argue are probably the demographic that carry the largest stigma.

I've gotten to know so many of them, almost all of them are dads who made the scariest decision of their lives, risk their lives to cross one of the most dangerous jungles in the world for a chance to come here so that they could send money so their kids can eat.

And as parents, we want to protect them.

We don't want them to lose their innocence and to see and know that this is a dark broken world that most people on this planet are not having the experience that we're having here.

Now, it became really real for them when they themselves handed out bananas to little kids their own age who had nothing.

They immediately went home and purged all their favorite stuffies and their cars.

I don't need seven hoodies.

I don't need four winter coats.

All these boots don't fit anymore.

I mean, kids jump into action.

Kids are the ones we should be looking to.

They're the ones who clearly see that person's hungry.

That person needs help, and they take action.

They don't first stop to consider border policy or politics.

They're not worried about that.

There's a human being in front of them that needs something.

And maybe that's why this is a movement that started with moms, because we have a soft spot in us already, and we see the world in many ways through our children's eyes.

And the way kids see it, it's really simple because it is simple.

This is humanity.

Again, this is a global crisis.

And this is a moment where as humanity, we can take a stand and say, I want the right to work and feed myself and my kids.

Why would I keep that from someone else?

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