Aura pointed at the corner of her left eye, where a scar, she said, reminded her of why she had left the Colombian coastal region of Córdoba seven months ago. Her ex-boyfriend, a local police officer, had beaten her and threatened to kill her if she reported him to the authorities, she said. Fearing for her life, the 31-year-old decided to embark on a more than 2,000-mile journey north to a country she considered to be the safest in the world.
“I told my eldest daughter I was leaving for the US,” said Aura, whose last name the Guardian is withholding due to concerns for the safety of her family in Colombia. “But I promised her that I will find a job and provide her an education.”
In a restaurant in Sacramento county, where she has been living since June, Aura thought about that promise she made to her daughter. Since her arrival in the US, it has become more complicated to keep it.
On 2 February, Aura and a friend walked across the mountains of the infamous Darién Gap, a roadless jungle connecting Panama with South America. She traversed most countries in Central America to reach Mexico, where she traveled north for days until she arrived in the border town of Ciudad Juárez. Unable to secure an appointment to enter the US through a Biden administration app known as CBP One for over a month, she surrendered to the US agents near the border wall in El Paso, Texas, on 10 May.
After five days in a border detention center, Aura was released with a form that required her to appear in an immigration court on 12 July in Portland, Oregon, where the friend she traveled with had relatives. Her immediate concern was getting money to buy a ticket to the west coast. So when two men in civilian clothes approached her and another group of migrants at a shelter near the US-Mexico border and promised them housing and a job in California, Aura believed her prayers had finally been answered.
Aura said the two men gave her a form that read in Spanish: “I understand that this program is administered by the Florida division of emergency management. I understand that the contractor of this program is Vertol Systems Company, Inc.”
A Florida official confirmed that the state transported the migrants to Sacramento through Vertol Systems, the same company that flew approximately 50 asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard almost a year ago.
The Republican governors of Texas and Florida last year started transporting migrants to Democratic-led jurisdictions, without notifying local authorities. The transfers have been criticized as political stunts in response to the Biden administration’s border policies. The Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, allocated $12m in his 2023-2024 budget for “implementation of the Governor’s initiative to protect Floridians against the harms resulting from illegal immigration by facilitating the transport of unauthorized aliens”. Since June, several buses with migrants have arrived in California cities, including Sacramento and Los Angeles.
But far from the political stage, Aura’s main concern is to earn enough every month to avoid homelessness in a state that accounted for 30% of the country’s unhoused population in 2022. In Sacramento county, at least 9,278 people experienced homelessness last year, according to a report from California State University.
When Aura arrived in California’s capital city, Sacramento Area Congregations Together (ACT), a faith-based community organization, helped her secure a hotel room to temporarily live in.
However, on 27 July, the organization sent Aura and 30 other migrants a letter stating: “Starting Sept 1, participants must contribute $30 per person for housing accommodation,” noting that any “failure to comply will result in the termination of your participation in Sacramento ACT’s program”.
“How am I going to pay or look for a place to live if I can’t work?” said Aura, whose two daughters are living with their grandmother in Colombia. “The organization has helped me a lot but now I’m afraid of sleeping on the streets again, like I did on my way here.
“Sometimes I want to eat what other people are eating, but I can’t. I don’t have the money,” she said. “The little I have, I send it to my mother, who’s taking care of my two daughters.”
Sacramento ACT’s executive director, Gabby Trejo, said the letter was “meant to confirm that our funding would only allow us to pay for the hotel until 30 September”. The fee, Trejo said, would cover the entire month of September at the hotel. Though the organization has paid for the month using donations, she said the payment would help prepare migrants for the future.
When asked what would happen to the 31 migrants if Sacramento ACT couldn’t secure more funds, Trejo said: “Homelessness is something that we had already as an organization been working and advocating. This region wasn’t prepared; we didn’t have a program like Los Angeles or New York. They have migrant shelters. But I will continue to knock on more doors.”
Sacramento’s mayor, Darrell Steinberg, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
With no job, Aura was not able to purchase a bus or plane ticket to attend her court hearing in Portland. Her lawyers told her they would request to have her case transferred to Sacramento.
While her legal status remains uncertain, Aura can’t legally work in the US. However, she has started studying English on her phone with the hope that one day she can get a stable job. For now, without a work permit, proof of income or a credit history, Aura and the 30 other migrants in her hotel can’t rent a place to live and find themselves on the brink of homelessness.
“I can’t go back to Colombia. I made a promise to my daughter,” Aura said. “I can’t go back to the violence I escaped from.”
