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East Colfax Avenue was the best place to find a job. That's what everyone told Sofia Roca.
Never mind the open drug use, the sex workers or the groups of other migrant women marching the sidewalks soliciting work at the very same Mexican restaurants and bakeries.
On East Colfax in Aurora, Colorado, bosses would speak Spanish and might be willing to hire someone like Roca — a 49-year-old immigrant from Colombia — without legal authorization to work. That was the rationale for going back each morning, fruitless as it was.
“Do you know how to cook Mexican food?” asked one woman when Roca inquired about a kitchen position. Roca’s accent was a giveaway: not Mexican.
“I can learn,” Roca replied in Spanish.
Responded the woman: “We’re not hiring."
As record numbers of South Americans attempt to cross the U.S. southern border, many are landing in communities that are unprepared for them — and sometimes outright hostile.
Women are leaving Colombia, and to a greater extent Venezuela, to escape starvation and violence, to provide for their children and to seek medical care. They represent some of the more than 42,000 migrants who have arrived in the Denver area over two years. Many didn’t know anyone in Denver. But it was the closest city to which Texas was offering free bus rides, both to relieve pressure on its towns and to make a political point to liberal-leaning cities about immigration’s impact on the border.
From Denver, untold numbers made their way to the suburb of Aurora, lured by cheaper rent and abundant Spanish speakers. But finding a job has been anything but easy, and women face their own particular challenges.
Last year, nearly 900,000 women and girls tried to cross the U.S. southern border, more than a fivefold increase over the last decade, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows. Like many of them, Roca came to the U.S. to help her children. Her adult daughter in Colombia suffers from lupus and can’t afford “the good medicines.”
After making it across the U.S. border, Roca told U.S. agents she was seeking asylum. She heard from a shelter worker in El Paso that Denver was offering migrants free housing and Texas would pay to get her there.
Roca arrived in November and stayed two weeks in a shelter. When she went looking for work along East Colfax, she observed an icy reception.
She didn't know the benefits many recent migrants have received — specifically, a path to a temporary work visa and with it better-paying jobs — were causing resentment among Aurora's large Mexican community. Many have loved ones in the country illegally or have themselves lived for years in the United States without legal permission to work.
Resentment for newcomers was building in another corner of Aurora, too — City Hall. Aurora officials in February had warned other communities against housing migrants there, vowing not to spend city money to help them. This summer, Aurora’s mayor repeated a landlord’s claim that a notorious Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building. Even though police say that's false, former President Donald Trump took up the claim, mentioning it at his campaign rallies. The mayor last month walked back some of his comments.
Roca never made a deliberate decision to settle in Aurora. To her, it wasn’t clear where Denver ended and Aurora began.
So when Roca's time is almost up at the Denver shelter, she does the only thing she knows to do: She heads to East Colfax in Aurora.
A man standing by his truck outside a thrift store catches her attention. He says he can help her, but not in Colorado. She can come to Kentucky with him and his family.
After more than a week of staying with the family in Kentucky, Roca learns the man's wife works in el negocio, or “the business.” There is not much work in Kentucky, so she earns her money through sex work, she tells Roca, while her kids play a few feet away.
A few days later, a Mexican man in his 30s pulls up outside the couple's trailer in a pickup truck.
He’d seen a picture of Roca and liked her — and would pay $1,000 for two nights with Roca, the wife says. Roca would keep $600, the couple would get $400.
In her month in the United States, Roca has come to understand she'll have to make sacrifices in this country. But subjecting herself to the whims of a stranger in such an intimate and vulnerable way?
“No,” she tells the woman. “I’m not going anywhere with anyone.”
The man is told to leave. The insults start immediately.
How are you going to earn money, girl? asks the woman. You’re not going to just live here for free.
Back to Aurora and East Colfax Avenue.
On most days walking along Colfax, Roca says, men would solicit her for sex, holding up their fingers to signal how many hundreds of dollars they were willing to pay.
As she looked for work in March, she came across what looked like an old motel. A man behind a plexiglass window urged her to try the bar in the back.
At a few Mexican cantinas around Aurora and Denver, “ficheras,” as the women are known in Spanish, sell beers at a markup to men and pocket the profits. It can be a fast way to earn money, but also a route to sex trafficking.
“I don’t think I have to do that yet,” Roca said. “But this street — it only offers prostitution.”
Since returning to Aurora, Roca had discovered she has few options for establishing legal residence or working legally in the U.S. She told U.S. Border Patrol officials she plans to plead for asylum at her deportation hearing, but she doubts they will grant it.
She had gotten in touch through Facebook with a friend from Colombia living in the northeastern U.S. “She’s told me she can get me a job at a hotel and I can stay with her,” she said.
Two days later, with about $80 in her pocket, Roca boarded a Greyhound bus paid for by the city of Denver. (The Associated Press is not identifying her new location. Roca is afraid the Cuban couple might seek her out after she spoke about them in the media.)
Roca’s friend followed through on her promises, connecting her to a job cleaning hotel rooms. She walks through the city with ease — and anonymously.
“It’s a huge difference from my life in Denver,” she says. “There’s less chaos, and no one has disrespected me."
She's not sure how long she'll stay. But Sofia Roca will never live in Aurora, Colorado, again.
