March 12, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
International gangs operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico
border are spreading to cities nationwide, including Denver,
officials say.
Federal immigration authorities on Friday announced the arrests of
375 suspected members and associates of Central American, Mexican
and other gangs across the country over the past two weeks – the
latest in a year-long effort that has caught 2,388.
In Denver, immigration agents have arrested 70 suspected members of
gangs such as MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, since July, including
seven in the past two weeks, said Jeff Copp, regional chief of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
All those arrested locally lacked legal immigration papers or had
been involved in burglaries, car thefts or fake document
trafficking, Copp said. All, he said, had “verified gang
tattoos.”
Federal agents teamed with local police to identify and arrest the
seven arrested most recently in Denver. Nationwide, of those
arrested this past year, 533 face criminal charges, and 1,855 were
charged with immigration violations.
In some cities, international gangs have preyed on
illegal-immigrant workers who owe money to smugglers.
No links to al-Qaeda have been established, said Claude Arnold,
chief of anti-gang operations at immigration headquarters in
Washington.
March 12, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Of 375 arrests in past 2 weeks, seven were made in Denver
Immigration officials are cracking down on gangs operating on both
sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to prosecute and deport.
International gangs operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico
border are spreading to cities nationwide, including Denver,
officials say.
Federal immigration authorities on Friday announced the arrests of
375 suspected members and associates of Central American, Mexican
and other gangs across the country over the past two weeks – the
latest in a year-long effort that has caught 2,388.
In Denver, immigration agents have arrested 70 suspected members of
gangs such as MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, since July, including
seven in the past two weeks, said Jeff Copp, regional chief of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
All those arrested locally lacked legal immigration papers or had
been involved in burglaries, car thefts or fake document
trafficking, Copp said. All, he said, had “verified gang
tattoos.”
International gangs “are spreading across the country, and they
are going to move anywhere they have a community that will support
them and a network set up,” he said.
Federal agents teamed with local police to identify and arrest the
seven arrested most recently in Denver. Nationwide, of those
arrested this past year, 533 face criminal charges, and 1,855 were
charged with immigration violations.
Authorities said 260 of those arrested over the past two weeks
nationwide are suspected of crimes including drug-dealing, rape and
murder.
In some cities, international gangs have preyed on
illegal-immigrant workers who owe money to smugglers.
No links to al-Qaeda have been established, said Claude Arnold,
chief of anti-gang operations at immigration headquarters in
Washington.
The gangs “commit acts of violence wherever they are. They rob.
They do carjacking. They do drive-by shootings,” Arnold said.
“They’re a threat to public safety.”
Along the U.S.-Mexico border, gangs increasingly team up with
cartels that smuggle drugs and people, authorities said. Attacks on
U.S. Border Patrol agents are increasing, with more than 700 last
year.
A recent FBI intelligence bulletin warned that “a known alien
smuggler operating near Rio Bravo, Texas, has instructed his
employees to shoot at U.S. Border Patrol agents.”
Years ago, migrants from Central America formed MS-13, the 18th
Street Gang and others in Los Angeles. As U.S. authorities in the
1990s deported members convicted of crimes, the gangs spread south
of the border. The gangs now threaten security across Central
America and Mexico.
Some of those detained in recent sweeps are to be deported. “The
alternative is to leave them on the streets,” said Dean Boyd,
spokesman at immigration headquarters.
“If we have criminal evidence, we are going to use it, put ’em in
jail for a long time,” Boyd said. “If we don’t, we are going to
deport ’em.”
January 30, 2006 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
Colorado ski areas hire hundreds of college students from South America to fill seasonal jobs, but the practice is drawing criticism.
Copper Mountain – Colorado ski resorts that have exhausted their
quotas for hiring foreign temporary workers are resurrecting a
1960s tradition: enlisting college students to meet low-wage labor
needs.
But these days, the students come from South America.
Ski towns now employ hundreds of foreign students – from Brazil,
Chile, Argentina, Peru and elsewhere – under a U.S. government
cultural-exchange program that allows them to work while
experiencing life in America.
Critics complain that this growing reliance on foreign students
strains the spirit of cultural exchange and hurts U.S. workers.
Congressional investigators also recently found that the government
is failing to oversee the program as required.
Across the Colorado mountains, South American students now tune
skis, greet guests, run cash registers, flip burgers, wait tables
and more – generally for around $8 an hour, but sometimes for as
little as $2.50 an hour, plus tips.
They often juggle two jobs to afford housing. Some learned the hard
way this year that the life of a resort worker entails scrambling
for bed space and gobbling too much fast food.
Even so, “it’s been a good deal for me,” said Brazilian Leo
Cavalcante, 21, herding minivans through a snowpacked parking lot
here. He’s motivated more to hone his English and have an adventure
than to earn money, he said.
The government’s program for bringing in students “was developed
as an exchange program to expose foreign nationals to the United
States. It was not intended to take over jobs,” said Sally
Lawrence, administrator at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of
Education and Cultural Affairs.
The rules let students on summer vacation – which in the Southern
Hemisphere coincides with winter here – work for up to four months,
Lawrence said. “A lot of people in the United States don’t want
these jobs. As I understand, there’s a (labor) shortage.”
Not fair, contends Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for
Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., which favors stricter
limits on hiring abroad to fill U.S. jobs.
“A cultural visa is turning into a work visa,” Krikorian said.
Hiring U.S. college students instead of foreign students “might
make a lift ticket cost more,” he said. “But is importing foreign
labor to keep ticket costs low a proper function of government?”
A Government Accountability Office investigation concluded in
October that State Department overseers must do more to guard
against abuses, such as students overstaying visas and exploitation
of students. A State Department “compliance unit” was not fully
funded, the GAO report said.
Each year before ski season, Colorado resort operators dip into an
alphabet soup of government visa programs to build their workforce.
First, they line up as many as 14,000 “H2B” foreign temporary
workers. Then they hire hundreds of South American students under
the J-1 “summer work travel” program.
The State Department issued 106,000 J-1 visas to admit foreign
students under the work-travel program in 2005, up from 71,218 in
2001.
Unlike the 66,000 H2B visas the government gives – a
congressionally set national quota exhausted for this year by
mid-December – J-1 visas let students roam and switch jobs, and
there’s no cap.
Some 52 private companies, designated by the State Department,
recruit foreign students through agents abroad. The students and
their families pay up to $2,500 for visas, airfare and other fees.
The sponsoring companies then must supervise students and report
their whereabouts to the Department of Homeland Security.
If evidence arises that a sponsor isn’t fulfilling its
responsibilities, the company would get a telephone call to “find
out what’s going on,” Lawrence said.
In Colorado, Copper Mountain this year hired about 200 South
American students, said Sarah Wing, the resort’s human resources
manager. Copper’s parent, Vancouver, British Columbia-based
Intrawest Corp., also relies on foreign students at its Winter Park
and Mary Jane ski areas.
Vail Resorts Inc., which owns Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Keystone
and Vail, employs “a few hundred,” said Nicole Greener,
international staffing manager.
Without foreign workers, Greener said, Vail Resorts would have to
rethink its labor strategy. The downside of hiring students is that
they can only work for four months. “They don’t get you through
the whole season,” she said.
Colorado ski resorts’ “increasing reliance on foreign workers
suggests that they can’t hire Americans at the wage that they’re
paying,” U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., leader of the House
immigration reform caucus, said in a written statement.
“The J-1 program is being used not to expand a foreign student’s
understanding of the United States, but to undercut American
workers,” Tancredo said.
Beyond that, “our myriad visa categories actually encourage
abuse.”
Tancredo favors a single worker visa system.
This winter, South American exchange students in Summit County
discovered what U.S. workers long have lamented: Although the
resorts are eager to hire, housing is scarce and often
unaffordable.
Dozens of Brazilians were left crunching through dark, icy streets
on a night in December, with temperatures below 10 degrees,
searching for vacant motel rooms. Some clashed with managers over
occupancy limits. A window was broken. Tempers flared.
Some huddled daily at the Frisco Information Center between work
shifts for warmth and free access to e-mail. Copper Mountain
managers, whose 500-unit worker dormitory was full, directed
students to Leadville, 25 miles away over 11,300-foot Fremont Pass,
to find rooms.
Cramming into various motels for a month became “a huge problem
for me,” said Gabriella Rocha, 19, a Brazilian working two jobs in
Breckenridge.
“It’s not the way I wanted it to be. I don’t want to be
vulnerable. I want to know how much I’m going to pay each month,
and where I’m going to stay.”
Local mothers got involved, opening church doors and taking
students into their homes.
“Somebody needs to be overseeing this closely,” said Jill
Clement, director of the Frisco Information Center, who adopted two
Brazilians and a New Zealander. “We don’t want to see this happen
again.”
Foreign students were told in advance about job and housing
opportunities, and many chose to make arrangements on their own,
said Janice Haigh, vice president of Camp Counselors USA, a
California-based sponsor company that recruited 6,000 students on
J-1 visas – including many working in Colorado.
Most have reported an address as required, Haigh said, though
there’s nobody on-site in Colorado to verify their whereabouts.
“We’re assuming we have an honest bunch of participants,” she
said.
After an initial scramble, exchange students this month were
settling in and, after 12-hour workdays, partying. Many flock to
the Salt Creek disco at Breckenridge, where bouncers now check
passports instead of driver licenses.
On the job, South Americans bring “a work ethic you don’t find in
twentysomething Americans. They’re polite, friendly. They’re always
here,” said Leslie Holmes, assistant manager in Spencer’s
restaurant at the Beaver Run Hotel. “And the younger workforce
revitalizes the nightlife of the town – absolutely.”
Foreign students say that in spite of hardships, they’re also
glimpsing modern U.S. values.
“I’m working three jobs. I’m sharing a house with 12 guys,” said
Bruno Cunha, 24, of Brazil, behind the counter at Frisco’s
Loaf-N-Jug around midnight.
Now he and his girlfriend want to leave, he said. Soon they’ll have
enough money. They plan on savoring some free days drifting around
Europe.
December 22, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Counter-Terrorism, Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
In Denver, it’s been three years since any fine was imposed for failure to verify workers’ immigration status.
While Congress wrestles with new legislation to crack down on
employers who hire illegal-immigrant workers, enforcement of an
existing prohibition has all but ceased.
Not a single employer in the Denver area has been fined for three
years, records show, and federal authorities have targeted only a
handful of employers nationwide.
This week, experts on all sides of the intensifying national
immigration debate agreed: Work- site enforcement will be crucial
in efforts to deal effectively with growing numbers of illegal
foreign-born workers.
“If I could do one thing in the area of immigration reform, it
would be to stop employers from providing the magnet. Then we’d
have much of this problem solved,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo,
R-Colo., leader of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.
A 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border that Tancredo and a
majority of fellow lawmakers demand, costing hundreds of millions
of dollars, “is a symbol as much as it is a practical obstacle
…,” Tancredo said. “I certainly believe we should have that
symbol, but the real key is work-site enforcement.”
Longtime federal immigration chief Doris Meisner, now a senior
fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington,
called current work-site enforcement “a charade,” a
“wink-and-nod system” vulnerable to fraud and fakery.
The 1986 law that makes hiring illegal workers a crime “is an
unworkable law because of the verification issue. There’s no way
for employers to know whether the documents they see are valid,”
she said.
“And they don’t have a requirement to verify those documents. That
has to be fixed,” said Meisner, who ran the Immigration and
Naturalization Service under President Clinton.
“You have to have a way that’s straightforward” – similar to
credit-card verification using photo identification and Social
Security numbers – to check workers, she said.
Establishing penalties and a database for screening workers “is an
important step in developing a credible immigration system,” said
Marshall Fitz, advocacy director for the American Immigration
Lawyers Association.
That group and Meisner contend work-site enforcement must be
combined with bringing in more temporary workers to ensure U.S.
economic competitiveness.
Even business advocates at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor
required work-site screening “as long as it is fast, reliable and
accurate,” chamber vice president Randy Johnson said. “We
recognize that improved employer verification has to be part of
reform.”
Senate lawmakers now are expected to offer “guest worker”
proposals. House lawmakers have passed broad enforcement-
oriented legislation that would require employers to verify workers
are legal and impose fines of $25,000 per violation.
Today, federal enforcers let companies police themselves. Under a
nationwide pilot program, only 4,830 employers nationwide (131 in
Colorado, 31 in Denver) voluntarily checked Social Security numbers
against a federal database last year.
Federal enforcers also have failed for nearly a decade to issue
guidelines on which identification documents employers should
review, a Government Accountability Office investigation found.
Wide use of fake documents and identities complicates enforcement.
Government statistics show that workplace arrests of illegal
workers nationwide decreased from 17,554 in 1997 to 159 in 2004.
Notices of intent to fine employers decreased from 865 in 1997 to
three in 2004.
In Denver, no employer has been fined for three years for hiring
illegal workers, said Carl Rusnok, regional Homeland Security
spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Immigration officials blame their lagging enforcement of the
current work-site law on post-
9/11 security priorities. Field agents focus on sensitive work
sites: nuclear power plants, military bases and airports.
Now Homeland Security chiefs are beginning to “look at giving
employers better tools to determine the legality of their
workforce. Some of these things are going to be unveiled pretty soon,” said Dean Boyd, national Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman in Washington.
“If employers don’t take those steps,” he said, “we are looking at what sanctions are available.”
December 5, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
He came from Sudan. He found a job and saw a more prosperous
future.
But Arif Mobasher, 43, still questions America’s promise of true
freedom, especially amid reports that President Bush ordered the
National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails
between U.S. residents and people in other countries without court
approval in an effort to track al-Qaeda.
Even longtime U.S. residents – from those in shiny glass
headquarters for international business to the U.S. Capitol – were
asking questions Friday.
Mobasher dials Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, every week to speak with
his father, mother and brother.
“I’m not talking about anything political,” he said.
But his safest course now, he said, is to assume U.S. spies always
listen and to give up notions of privacy.
“I feel like: Let the government know about everything, so they
can know I’m on a straight line,” he said.
Mobasher was one among several who, finishing Friday prayers at the
Colorado Muslim Society’s southeast Denver mosque, mulled the
implications if the eavesdropping of international communications
without warrants, as reported Friday in The New York Times, is
accepted.
Like him, many come from what the U.S. government calls “countries
of concern.” All make regular phone calls home.
“When I came here, I came for the freedom,” said Miloud Haddou,
33, of Morocco, who heard radio reports at dawn and realized he
could be affected.
Today, in the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. government “can
do anything to you – get into your business, into your privacy. …
I’m not angry. I never could be angry. But this is kind of
disappointing,” said Haddou, who arrived in the U.S. five years
ago.
Now, in his twice-a-week phone calls to Casablanca, he’ll have to
skirt subjects such as “the situation in Morocco,” he said.
“You’ll kind of worry more about the conversation.”
The question is whether this is legal, said Jim Reis, president of
the World Trade Center Denver, which helps Colorado companies doing
business abroad.
Increased surveillance to stop terrorism “is very unfortunate,”
he said. “… It’s become part of our lives. But it’s got to be done
within the (laws) that govern our country.”
Any eavesdropping “should be stopped until it has court
approval,” Reis said. Computer technology “creates a lot of
opportunities for government to do monitoring. At the same time, it
really begins to infringe on individual rights.”
In Washington, the reports may have influenced U.S. senators who
blocked a vote Friday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the
anti-terrorism law giving law enforcement groups new power.
The NSA surveillance inside the country without warrants is
“deeply troubling,” said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
“If we needed a wake-up call about the need for adequate
civil-liberties protections to be written into our laws, this is
it.”
He stopped short of calling for stopping the practice, however,
saying, “We need more information.”
Some in the Senate have called for oversight hearings.
At the Denver mosque – as merchants sold fruit, cloth and couscous
– some said phone and e-mail snooping may be needed.
“The way the world is going, let them do it. It’s for everybody’s
safety,” said Camran Naimi, 31, who arrived with his mother from
Afghanistan in 1990.
Another person from Sudan, part-time law student Abubakr El-Noor,
31, said he really wants privacy when he calls his girlfriend and
would prefer that U.S. spies “go through the courts” because
“sometimes there’s a good reason … (but) not all the time,” for
surveillance.
But he also figured that “sometimes, to control your security, you
need to do something illegal.”
Grilling chicken in her couscous trailer, Sally Ben, 42, of Morocco
shook her head. When she read the news, “I couldn’t believe it,”
she said.
“I thought: It can’t be. This is the United States.”
November 13, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Africa, Africa Lifelines, Counter-Terrorism, Globalization, Human Rights, Migration, Security, U.S. Role in the World
Denver agent training Kenyan officers in forensics The U.S. views Africa with interest as a frontier for terrorism, but any military acts can stoke resentment.
Nairobi, Kenya – Nine thousand miles from his home in Denver, FBI Special Agent Carle Schlaff faced 60 top African detectives packed into a room in Nairobi as part of a new U.S. focus on Africa.
Schlaff’s mission: to work with these African counterparts on
forensics and cultivate them as security partners.
The U.S. government views Africa with renewed interest as a
frontier for terrorism where al-Qaeda and other Islamic radicals
hide. Africa also supplies a growing share of the oil Americans
consume – nearly a fifth.
Terrorists in Africa could affect U.S. interests and organize
attacks inside the United States, said William Bellamy, U.S.
ambassador to Kenya.
“We try to monitor as best we can” airport travelers to prevent
terrorists from entering America, he said. “But I would not
exclude the possibility that could occur. … It’s certainly
possible.”
Kenyan police recently found anti-tank missiles – some U.S.-made – in a terrorism suspect’s apartment at Mombasa, Kenya.
The U.S. priority in Africa of combating global terrorism has led
President Bush to deploy military forces at a growing network of
bases from Algeria to Uganda – in a pattern Bush set after the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
About 1,600 U.S. soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors are posted
in Djibouti at a base called Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign
Legion outpost. It is the first large long-term deployment of U.S.
forces to Africa.
Bush also sent special forces soldiers to Mali, Chad and Niger for
exercises with local forces against radical Muslims.
And U.S. officials have delivered more than $152 million in weapons
to sub-Saharan Africa since 2001, up from $92 million during the
previous four years.
But the military approach stokes resentment. African leaders say
they’re more interested in fighting worsening poverty than serving
U.S. interests.
African authorities believe young men were willing to join
anti-U.S. groups “because they had no jobs,” said Nicholas
Kamwende, commander of the Kenyan National Police anti-terrorism unit.
“We think fighting poverty is one of our ways of fighting
terrorism,” he said.
Kamwende said the United States traditionally has used skillful
diplomacy and developmental aid to help Africa address water,
health care and economic needs.
Tensions are mounting. Kenyan courts recently acquitted several
terrorism suspects indicted in the United States, and Kenyan
lawmakers have refused to pass an anti-terrorism law.
U.S. State Department officials say savvy cops such as Schlaff, who
also has worked in Botswana and the Red Sea area, can be more
effective than soldiers in helping locals root out terrorists.
In a spartan conference hall in Nairobi, Schlaff wore a sport shirt
and slacks instead of the camouflage fatigues that mark most U.S.
warriors.
He smiled the way he might over coffee back home as the African
detectives in coats and ties stood quiet. He handed out FBI pins,
patches, fingerprint kits and cameras. He showed photos of his
family in the Colorado mountains.
He told of his forensics work on the FBI team that investigated the
bombing of the USS Cole warship that killed 17 sailors. Schlaff
helped dredge the harbor off Yemen and found part of an outboard
motor that cracked the case.
The attentiveness of Kenyan police officers impressed him, Schlaff
said.
“Their focus is street crime. We’re not suggesting a different
focus. We’re just trying to make them aware there could be a
terrorism matter involved.”
Now, Schlaff is back in the United States. But detectives he
coached are working in Eastleigh, a Somali-run ghetto on the
outskirts of Nairobi, trying to recruit sources, offering money for
tips.
They’ve discovered funds flowing from Somalia to Eastleigh for
construction of shopping malls. They’re investigating who might be
sinking roots or raising money in Kenya.
These efforts bore out Schlaff’s conclusions. Street-
level police when treated with respect “are genuinely interested
in working with us” against terrorism, he said.
“If you want to convince people Americans are not the aggressor, I
think you’ve got to do it by being there low on the ground.”
June 13, 2004 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
Thousands of Latin American teens fleeing gangs and poverty in
their home nations are being turned away from the United States.
And many of the youths sent back to their homes embark again on the dangerous journey.
Tecun Uman, Guatemala – Heat beats down on Jared Membreño as he
stands by railroad tracks, eyeing northbound boxcars at the
Guatemala-Mexico border. Deported from the United States to
Honduras at age 16, he again is trying to escape his bleak life
selling stolen bananas for $2 a day. Now 19, Membreño scavenges for
food and water, dodges police, and battles gangs that control the
rail route.
A whistle wails. He hears the creak of iron wheels, which have
killed and maimed many migrants. He spots an empty ladder on a
boxcar, runs, leaps.
“I don’t think, only pray I don’t fall, because if I fall …”
His fingers curl around a rung, muscles straining, feet flailing
for a foothold.
The U.S. government is deporting more and more teenagers like
Membreño who are fleeing poverty and lack of opportunity abroad.
Immigration records show deportations of teenagers increased by 38
percent, from 717 in 2001 to 990 last year.
Thousands more were turned back at the southern border without
hearings and handed over to Mexican authorities, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Ernestine Fobbs said. The
government can’t give precise figures, she said.
Yet tens of thousands still come, mostly from Mexico and Central
America.
Many teens travel unaccompanied by adults. There are no estimates
for how many make it through to the United States.
What officials do know is that, when teens are turned away, about
40 percent return.
And there isn’t enough space in U.S. detention facilities to hold
more teens in custody.
U.S. officials are supposed to deport each teen according to a
“plan of return” that ensures they are safe, said Wade Horn,
assistant secretary of health and human services.
Immigration agents “are not supposed to be sending kids back to
their country of origin and just dump them off at the airport,”
Horn said. “I don’t think the United States has the resources or
even the obligation to ensure that every child in the world is
cared for well. But the kids we have contact with, we do have an
obligation to them.”
Trouble back home
Central American authorities, however, say teen deportees often
suffer.
They face “life in the streets, life with angry parents,
prostitution, drug addiction,” said Josefina Arellano, a
Guatemalan government lawyer charged with protecting children.
“When they are returned and don’t have a family, they find
gangs,” she said. “The gangs become their family. If they try to
leave the gangs, they are killed. If this family wants them to
steal, they must steal.”
Nobody has a solution.
Earlier this year, a Colorado case raised an outcry.
It involved Edgar Chocoy, a soccer-loving 16-year-old who fled gang violence in Guatemala City to join
his mother in the United States.
Then he was arrested with a gang. When U.S. authorities in Denver
moved to deport him, he begged for asylum, saying gangs would kill
him if he was sent home.
A judge deported him anyway. Back in Guatemala he was murdered,
shot in the back of the neck.
More often, hopes are crushed quietly.
On his eighth attempt to enter the United States, Franklin Herrera,
16, made it as far as the Rio Grande. His father is dead. His
mother in Honduras didn’t want him to go but couldn’t provide
food.
“I told her, ‘I want to help you,”‘ Herrera said. “And she said,
‘OK. Go try. God bless you.”‘
He was wading ankle-deep in the river on his way to Texas –
thinking of the house and little church he would build for his
mother, he said, when a border guard caught him.
“I could see Los Angeles, I think,” he said.
Membreño is one of those who did make it through.
Before he was deported, he earned $6.50 an hour taking care of
turkeys in Texas at a giant turkey farm – easy money compared with
selling bananas stolen from a U.S.-owned corporate plantation in
Honduras.
He sent home hundreds of dollars a month. It was all working out,
until police responded to a fight between his uncle and aunt – and
checked everybody’s immigration status.
He spent two months in a juvenile detention facility. Then a
magistrate ordered him deported, and he was moved to an adult
facility for two months.
“You find murderers, robbers. Mexicans were fighting against
Chicanos,” he said.
When he was flown back to Honduras, U.S. escorts handed him over to
local officials. That’s standard procedure in formal deportations.
The locals contacted Membreño’s family in their village near San
Pedro Sula and released him.
Money he sent home had helped buy land for a small patch of beans.
“But I saw my family suffering.”
His father earned $1.50 a day when he could find construction
work.
And the boy couldn’t find anything legal. Again, he was stuck.
“My father said, ‘If you want, go away.’ I didn’t think twice.”
Reforms unlikely to pass
Legislation in Congress, the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection
Act, would improve conditions for migrant teens held in U.S.
custody. It would require legal representation, appropriate
facilities, appointment of guardians, and careful questioning of
detainees to determine whether they faced persecution. Pushed by
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., it is not expected to pass this
year.
But the broader international problem looms: what happens when
governments increasingly turn away teens without detaining them –
and yet more keep fleeing for help.
“We don’t want to do bad things. Our intent is to find a job and
make money,” said Jose Mendes, 16, deported from Texas to
Guatemala, waiting for a northbound train at Hidalgo, Mexico.
“We make such a long trip. We almost get there. We just have to
make another step. And they say, ‘No.’ They don’t know how we feel.
It’s so hard, because you didn’t reach what you wanted.”
If deportees stay home, they face helter-skelter streets and often
are worse off than when they first left.
In the stench of Guatemala City’s central dump, Carlos Giovanne,
15, who was turned back from the United States last year, now picks
through trash collecting cardboard, metal, anything that might be
resold.
Around him, street children scavenge for tortillas and chicken,
sniffing 75-cent bottles of solvent. Giovanne labors to pay off
$187 that his mother, Alma, borrowed to fund his failed journey.
“I lost all my money,” Giovanne said.
Some find protection with gangs branching out from U.S. cities.
Governments estimate that across Central America there are more
than 60,000 gang members. Authorities see them as potential allies
for narcotics traffickers and terrorists.
Teens fleeing to the United States sometimes “are trying to leave
the gangs. And they face threats” if turned back, said Marta
Altolaguirre, vice minister of foreign affairs in Guatemala’s newly
elected government.
U.S. authorities should “maybe make exceptions on the deportation
of these kids, at least until this government has a chance to
provide a secure environment for the kids to be taken care of
properly,” she said.
Warning cries went unheeded
Edgar Chocoy wanted to be an exception.
He was raised by his grandparents in the gang-plagued barrio Villa
Nueva, on the south side of Guatemala City. His father had
abandoned him, and his mother left him as an infant to work in Los
Angeles.
Chocoy loved playing goalie in sandlot soccer games, but sometimes
sniffed glue, said Virgilia Rodriguez, an aunt. He joined a gang at
age 12, court records show.
At 14, when he tried to leave the gang, members threatened him,
Chocoy testified later. He set out by bus to join his mother in Los
Angeles.
And with the gang there, he was caught with guns. Immigration
agents moved him to a lockdown center in Alamosa and pressed to
kick him out of the country.
Deport me, Chocoy told immigration Judge James Vandello in Denver,
and gang members will kill me.
Vandello rejected his case for asylum. On March 10, federal agents
escorted him on an evening flight to Guatemala City, where local
officials released him to the custody of an aunt, Hortencia Guzman,
54.
He stayed indoors, she said, and wore long-sleeve shirts to hide
the “18” on his forearms – a symbol for the 18th Street gang he’d
joined in Los Angeles, rivals of the Mara Salvatrucha gang active
in Villa Nueva. His grandmother died while he was there.
After 17 days, Chocoy asked permission to go out for a soft drink
and to watch Villa Nueva’s Holy Week parade.
While he was parked on his bicycle watching, a gunman approached,
witnesses told the family. Chocoy threw the bike at his feet,
saying, “Take it.” He turned and ran.
The gunman caught Chocoy by a soccer court and shot him in the back
of his neck, said mechanic Carlos Arriola, 27, who was working
across the street. The police never investigated.
An anonymous mound of dirt beyond an unofficial dump covered
Chocoy’s body.
A shelter amid horrors
Meanwhile, along Guatemala’s northern border with Mexico, the Rev.
Ademar Barilli is trying to prevent more deaths. Barilli runs the
80-bed Casa de Migrantes shelter. Thousands of teenagers a year
come through, typically hoping to join relatives illegally inside
the United States, Barilli said. The teens, he said, “are looking
for food, work, life.”
Tattooed thugs lurk outside the shelter along banks of the Suchiate
River between Guatemala and Mexico. Girls face rape if caught, or
are forced into prostitution.
Salvadoran maid Mirna Portillo, 18, said she considered
prostitution. Instead, on a recent night, she left the shelter,
silently crossing the Suchiate on a raft with her half brother
Santos Aragon, 34. Their mother in El Salvador was going blind,
unable to work, and the family needed help.
Then in Mexico, Portillo and Aragon crept toward the train tracks
in Hidalgo, trying to avoid Mexican police. They slept in tall
grass, anticipating a sunrise departure. Instead, dawn brought
thugs with knives and pistols.
Portillo and Aragon ran, escaping through a market, then back
across the river. They pounded on the blue metal doors at Barilli’s
shelter until someone let them in.
“I was thinking, ‘Maybe this is the end,”‘ Portillo said. “At
first I regretted leaving. But then, I think, I have a purpose
because there is nobody to help us there in El Salvador. The only
ones who could help our family are my brother and me.”
For deportees trying to head north again, days are devoted to
begging for food and money on dusty market streets and at bus
stations.
“People see me on the street, and I am humiliated,” said Jayson
Hernandez, 19, deported last year by airplane to Tegucigalpa,
Honduras.
Denver was among the cities where Hernandez said he worked. He
recalled sleeping near the central bus station, where a police
officer told him he was too young to smoke. Now in Tecun Uman, he
was preparing “to take the train to Tijuana” and hitch to Denver
again.
“In 20 days, I will be at the border of the United States. I don’t
care about sleeping; I don’t care about hunger,” he said. “I have
friends in Denver. The United States is a good country to work in.
We must take advantage of it.”
“You want to cry”
The worst, migrants say, is getting caught.
Elmer Rodriguez, 15, left La Cruz Morazan, Honduras, sleeping out,
enduring mosquitoes, washing in rivers, climbing aboard trains,
raiding farm fields for mangos.
After weeks, authorities caught up with him near Tapachula, Mexico,
and tossed him into a concrete-floor holding facility.
“You want to cry. You will never reach your dreams. It’s so hard
to get so far, and then get caught,” Rodriguez said.
Slumped beside him, Ever Deras, 15, told of his work on a farm near
Copan, Honduras. The owner’s granddaughters passed him once and
were “happy, friendly. They used to tell me hello. I was nice with
them. Then the people who were in charge of me said, ‘Go work,’ and
they made me work until 9 o’clock. I felt very tired to be working
so late for a miserable wage.”
“We never had anybody help us. I feel that nobody knows me.”
In that detention center, there are no beds, let alone books. And
some children wait for days while authorities try to locate
relatives.
Parents inside the United States illegally, who call for their
children to come north, are largely to blame, said Gabriela
Coutiño, spokeswoman for the Mexican immigration agency. Then
again, those parents often can’t support their children at home,
she said.
And “there isn’t even a conversation” between governments about
how to deal with the growing numbers of teens in transit.
Some, such as Guatemalan villager Mauricio Martinez, 17, are maimed
by the wheels of trains.
Martinez fell while trying to catch a train in January. The wheels
severed his legs.
Now he sits on a bed in a red soccer jersey with other amputee
migrants at a house run by a nun in Chiapas, Mexico.
In a notepad, he sketches a woman.
“I want to go on,” he said, “but I can’t.”
…
Clinging to the ladder as his boxcar rolls north from the
Guatemala-
Mexico border, Membreño figures he has as good a chance as any to
make it back into Texas.
He’d eluded U.S. authorities before, hiking through arid
borderlands, and the trek seemed less daunting this time around.
He knew the risks. His cousin Danny had fallen from the top of a
boxcar and was “killed in four pieces” on his first trip north,
Membreño says. “I cried.”
Now the challenge is dealing with thugs. He and fellow migrants
describe themselves as a family, bonded by the dream of returning
to the United States. They had fought off one group of toughs by
throwing rocks. They would acquire machetes if necessary, Membreño
says.
He tightens his grip and holds on.
Staff writer Bruce Finley can be reached at 303.954.1700 or
bfinley@denverpost.com.
February 4, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Latin America, Migration
SAN JULIAN, Mexico – Outside the house, the annual fiestas
reverberated, three weeks of dancing, weddings, family reunions,
polished pickup trucks parading through town.
Inside, Maria del Carmen, 49, sat silently at her kitchen
table holding a photo of a man in a cowboy hat standing by his
beloved red horse.
The man should have been here with all the other husbands,
sons, brothers and fathers reveling in their hometown before
returning to work in the United States.
But 16 months ago, Denver police stormed the wrong house at
the wrong time. They killed him, the wrong man, in a botched drug
raid.
The man was her husband, Ismael Mena. To make amends, Denver
taxpayers paid $400,000. That money bought this house at the edge
of San Julian for Maria and her nine children – more convenient
than living on Mena’s hardscrabble farm southeast of here.
The kitchen is fancier than Maria ever imagined, with running
water, a stove, a 4-foot-tall refrigerator, tile floor, even a
microwave. In addition, monthly $1,600 checks are scheduled to
arrive for two decades.
Still, every check “makes me more sad, because I remember
what happened to my husband,” Maria del Carmen said. “I’m
thinking, it was much nicer when he was here in Mexico with us.”
And while the legal business is officially over, the Mena
case festers, raising questions of justice that have many
Coloradans, and Mexicans, furious.
Last month, Denver leaders let officer Joseph Bini, whose
faulty no-knock warrant triggered the raid, resume police work
after a three-month suspension. Last week, City Council members
agreed to pay $1.2 million – three times as much – to a Denver
teenager paralyzed when police shot him running from a burglary
with a gun.
“Disgusting,” Mexican Consul General Carlos Barros said in
Denver.
Here in Mexico, people shake their heads, saying this just
cements the hypocrisy of a nation that relies on Mexican labor as
never before while openly discounting Mexican lives.
Yet Maria’s message to you in Denver is measured: “We thank
everyone who is helping us, supporting us,” she said. “I feel sad
when I think of what happened to my husband. I take consolation
that I’m with my children.”
For Bini, she voiced compassion. “I’m very sad about what
happened to my husband,” she said. “But him, he needs his work. He
has a family, too.”
New house means end
of life on the land
Big changes in the Mena survivors’ lives began six months ago
when they used some settlement money to buy the two-story,
three-bedroom house in this farming town of about 20,000 people.
It cost $70,000.
Living here’s easier, though not as free, as on the farm
where the Menas struggled before. Ismael Mena was exceptionally
devoted to traditional farming on his 14 acres. He kept his family
in a three-room adobe house. He invested in livestock despite
scarce water and globalization’s side effects: collapsing beef and
milk prices.
Mexico’s entry into the world economy means more competition
for small farmers and new factory opportunities for workers,
raising expectations – and shaking traditions Mena loved.
Now, his survivors’ house is fairly typical.
San Julian is filled with modern, bright two- and three-story
homes painted pink, turquoise and yellow, some adorned with
intricate round observatory towers and giant rooftop satellite
dishes. That’s because an estimated 90 percent of men here work in
the United States. They earn up to $20 an hour (about $41,600 a
year, not counting overtime), enabling an ever-more comfortable,
family-oriented lifestyle.
They are among 300,000 or more Mexicans who go north, legally
or illegally, to work in U.S. cities such as Denver. Mexicans
working in the United States last year sent home an estimated $7
billion. Meanwhile, poverty in Mexico is increasing, with 15
million people living on less than $1 a day. Ismael Mena worked in
the United States for years, with an official work permit at
times. In Denver, Coca-Cola accepted his papers and gave him a
$300-a-week night-shift job lifting red plastic crates.
Today in Mexico, the Menas are more or less middle class. Few
people know they receive money from Denver. The $1,600 monthly
checks, which started arriving in August, cover basic expenses.
Maria said groceries for 10 – including 2-year-old grandson Miguel
– cost about $1,000. Medicine costs about $100. Ismael Jr., 18, is
diabetic. Twin 21-year-old daughters Rosaelia and Rosalilia suffer
from headaches and underwent medical tests.
“They are traumatized,” Dr. Ismael Macias said in his
diagnosis. “It will take time.”
Other monthly expenses include $80 for telephone service, $20
for electricity, $20 for cable television (39 channels) and $8 for
water. Maria and her daughters make most of their own clothes.
They walk to church and shops, though eldest son Heriberto, 22,
recently paid $8,000 for a used Chevy truck. Filling it with gas
costs about $50 – too much.
The main difference now: less work. Running water – “hot
here, cold here, and we even have hot water upstairs,” Maria noted
proudly – means she needn’t hike out to pumps or ponds and lug
buckets back every time she washes dishes or clothes.
The gas stove frees her from having to find, cut and haul
wood before meals.
The refrigerator enables a more diverse diet. Maria still
prepares corn tortillas and beans in the blackened ceramic pot she
used before. Now she also serves beef and fresh vegetables.
At last the children are regularly in school. At sunrise, as
roosters crow, Juanita, 13, and Irene, 15, their backpacks stuffed
with books and notepads, set out down Calle Reforma toward the
high school with 17 rooms and 700 students. Soon after, Alejandro,
12, who loves soccer, and Carmen, 9, who loves coloring books,
walk through a pasture to a primary school.
Ismael Jr., makes furniture at a small local factory. Wages
are less than $10 a day. But he’s proud, learning new skills. “Six
days a week,” he said, smiling, sanding a sheet of pine for
shelves that are sold here in San Julian.
Family keeps memories of hard-working patriarch
Mena’s family keeps a suitcase full of his work clothes to help
them remember him – very strong, hardworking, a loving man who
brought them toys from the United States, a horseman who could
also ride bulls.
“When you hold the clothes, it makes you content,
remembering,” Rosaelia said.
Yet memories also torment them, arriving unexpectedly,
sister Rosalilia added.
“Not exactly every hour, but at various times all the day.
Always when we see something he liked. Or when we see a red horse
– like his. It’s sad, thinking. …”
The twins plan to work at small household sewing centers in
the future if their headaches pass. Maria taught them to sew on a
white Kenmore that Ismael brought from the United States.
For now, they work at home, mopping the tiled floor daily.
They hang clothes to dry on the patio. The children help water red
flowers growing in silver coffee cans and clay pots. They’re not
allowed to play in the living room with immaculate new furniture.
One recent night, the Mena children walked through San Julian
to a carnival, part of the annual Candelaria fiestas. Originally
religious, the fiestas are adapted to a family-centered migratory
culture. The Menas passed bumper cars, a roller coaster and dart
games where visiting fathers hovered over other children smiling
happily.
It’s a source of great sadness for Maria that her eldest son,
Heriberto, plans to move north again in the migration that
consumed his father.
Heriberto, 22, first left at 16. That’s what local heroes do.
He excelled in the United States, essentially running one
restaurant, waiting tables at another. He graduated from high
school and had begun college computer courses when his father was
killed.
He never visited home for fear his lack of legal immigration
papers would make it difficult for him to get back to work. He
missed his father’s funeral for this reason. In December, he went
home because the settlement made his family’s situation less
precarious.
He loved it. He went out every night, circling up and down
Avenida Hidalgo, letting friends drive his blue truck. A photo of
his father in his wallet, and long-awaited braces on his teeth,
Heriberto exchanged greetings, shook hands, savored every glance
at the beautiful women. He danced late into one starry night with
a girl in a pink top and tight black pants as Julio Preciado and
his band performed.
“But one month is enough,” he said. There’s no work here that
appeals to him, he said. Farming offers no future.
Looking at Heriberto chatting over tequila at a wedding as
the bride and groom danced, he seemed “like the happiest guy in
the world,” said Juan Herrera, 33, a close friend who stood nearby.
But Heriberto’s head is turning inside, Herrera said. “Maybe
after five years, this family will begin to feel better.” Denver’s
wrongful death money “is part of” the healing, Herrera said. “But
it’s not everything. Because in Mexico the family is so strong, it
is harder here. It’s going to take time.”
No formal apology from Denver ever arrived here, the Menas say.
One recent morning, Heriberto drove half an hour east to the
cemetery where his father is buried.
Caretaker Pedro Losano was hauling weeds in a wheelbarrow.
Heriberto found the white tomb. He faced it silently for
nearly two minutes. He cried quietly.
He went to Losano and asked what the family must pay to keep
the bones in the tomb after five years.
Then Heriberto drove west, kicking up contrails of dust, on
the road to the family farm by an old church and a few houses that
together are known as San Felipe Jesus de las Casas Blancas.
He stopped at the church. Old men were fixing it up slowly
for a fiesta today. Heriberto entered through the side. He
crossed himself and sat in the front pew where the family used to
sit together.
Outside, Sara and Francisco Cabrera, selling sodas to passing
pilgrims, told Heriberto it’s not right that police responsible
for killing his father continue to work.
Heriberto drove on to the family farm where his grandmother
Dona Julia, 81, putters alone with her mutt and caged dove. She
refuses to leave the crumbling old house with dirt floors: “mi
casa.”
She padlocks herself into her room every night, where candles
burn by the carved statues of saints on her shelves.
Heriberto sat with her, and reluctantly gave her $100 for
food. He gave her money before and she promptly donated it to the
church in memory of her son.
An old friend, Santiago Torres, approached on his burro,
asking if anybody had seen three stray cows.
He told how he knew Ismael Mena when Heriberto was a toddler,
helped him build the gray adobe house and work the cornfield.
Torres knew Ismael “better than I,” Heriberto recalled sadly, for
his father worked in the United States during much of his childhood.
His grandmother returned to her stitching and watering her
plants. She said Ismael’s ghost visits her on the farm. “I still
cry for my littlest boy,” she said tearfully.
“I had a dream. My son was calling. “Mama! Mama!’ I woke up.
I went to console him, my poor little boy. But he wasn’t there.”
THE CASE OF ISMAEL MENA
Sept. 29, 1999
Denver police kill Mexican migrant Ismael Mena in a botched
no-knock drug raid on High Street in Denver. SWAT officers went to
the wrong house because of a mistake in a search warrant prepared
by officer Joseph Bini. Mena had been sleeping after his night
shift at the Coca-Cola bottling plant.
Dec. 15, 1999
The FBI launches as investigation of possible criminal civil
rights violations after Mexican officials raise concerns in
Washington, D.C.
Feb. 4, 2000
Special prosecutor appointed by Denver District Attorney Bill
Ritter charges Bini with perjury. Bini allegedly lied to the judge
who signed the warrant, claiming he knew the address in the
warrant was correct because he saw his informant enter and leave
the house.
Feb. 8, 2000
Denver Police Chief Tom Sanchez returns from Hawaii after being
called back by Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. That evening, Webb
fires Sanchez as chief.
Feb. 23, 2000
Webb names Division Chief Gerry Whitman interim police chief.
Feb. 24, 2000
Webb announces a proposed overhaul of Police Department
policies, including reducing the number of no-knock raids and
giving the public access to discipline records.
March 23, 2000
Mena family settles with the city of Denver for $400,000.
May 19, 2000
Gov. Bill Owens signs Senate Bill 208, which tightens
requirements for approval of no-knock warrants. A prosecutor’s
signature now is required before a judge is asked to approve a
warrant.
July 7, 2000
Whitman becomes police chief.
July 18, 2000
Denver police alter ride-along rules after revelations that
then-Colorado Rockie player Mike Lansing accompanied police during
the Mena raid.
Sept. 1, 2000
A Denver judge limits evidence that can be presented against
Bini. Mention of Mena’s death during next month’s trial is
forbidden.
Dec. 1, 2000
Denver District Judge Shelly Gilman sentences Bini to 12 months
probation and 150 hours of community service after he pleads
tearfuly for mercy. Bini pleaded guilty to first-degree
misconduct, a misdemeanor.
Jan. 15, 2001
Denver Manager of Safety Ari Zavaras and Whitman concur: Bini
can go back to work. They announce he received a three-month
suspension without pay.
Jan. 29, 2001
Denver City Council members approve a $1.2 million settlement
for a Denver teenager shot at the scene of a burglary by Denver
police officer Keith Cowgill. The teen was left paralyzed. Police
emphasized he had a gun. The $1.2 million is three times what
Denver paid Mena’s family.
January 14, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
Russian migrants left homes, families to follow a dream
At night in a gym south of Denver, a dozen Russian Cossack
dancers rehearse.
Sweat beads streak their faces as they clash swords. They
whirl around fiercely and, from squatting positions, snap-kick
their legs.
“Hey!”
They’re giving their all after taking a big risk: snubbing
their Russian government sponsors on a U.S. tour 13 months ago,
and leaving their children back in Russia – on a hunch that the
people in materially rich America will accept them.
“To this day, I think we made a good decision,” Stanislava
Perets, 26, said confidently.
But their future is uncertain as they defy the norm for
immigrants in Colorado, where the foreign-born population is
growing faster than in any other state.
Most immigrants do cleaning work, drive cabs, haul boxes in
warehouses, cook in restaurants or sell products – basic wage
services the state economy devours. Few enter immediately into the
professional careers that many of them trained for abroad. That
causes frustration, especially among Colorado’s well-educated
20,000 or more Russian speakers.
Depression and family strife result, social workers say.
In contrast, the Cossacks see performing as their only way
into America.
This band broke away from an elite Russian troupe that
traveled the world demonstrating traditional soldierly skills in
skits and dances, accompanied by the three-stringed balalaika. It
is superpatriotic artistry. Russian nationalists revere the
Cossack culture that evolved among boisterous peasant soldiers on
Russia’s southern frontiers.
The problem: On government salaries of about $40 a month in
Russia, these Cossack dancers barely got by.
On Dec. 3, 1999, they were sitting in a Florida hotel the day
after their 84-member troupe completed a multicity U.S. tour.
They were taking stock, comparing America’s material comfort
and respect for law and order with hardship in Russia. Andrei
Perets, 30, was typical. He worked three jobs in Russia – as
performer, teacher and night security watchman. He hardly slept.
He hardly saw his daughter.
Five Cossacks initially announced they intended to stay in
the United States. Others followed. Supervisors bristled. Reports
of a mutiny made headlines in Moscow and Rostov, the troupe’s home
base on the Don River near the Black Sea.
Historically, ancestors of these Cossacks often defied
government control.
Peasant soldiers enslaved under the czars, Cossacks revolted
frequently and at times were enlisted to defend against the Turks.
“Cossack” means “free person.” On Russia’s southern frontiers,
Cossacks honed their skills riding horses, sword-fighting,
shooting and swilling vodka.
“We didn’t want to spend our lives as slaves,” Perets said.
From Florida, the breakaway, modern-day Cossacks called
Sergey Shadioun, 43, a former Red Army performer they knew who’d
emigrated to Denver. They begged Shadioun to contact lawyers and
explore how the performers could emigrate legally. Shadioun
obliged, and eventually agreed to be president and chief
choreographer for the group. He found apartments they share in
Glendale. He rounded up equipment, including costumes and swords
that had to be ordered from Russia.
Many in Denver’s Russian-speaking community are impressed,
and hope the group will succeed here. “It would be nice to have a
group of wonderful performers,” said Anna Tsesarsky of Jewish
Family Services resettlement agency.
Yet cracking mainstream Colorado as a Cossack is hard.
By day, the once-celebrated dancers are strangers driving
around in newly purchased used cars. They struggle with English.
They decline to talk about “little work” they may do to supplement
what they earn performing. Basic needs are met. Each performer now
lives on about $1,000 a month, Shadioun said.
Nearly every night, they gather at the Universal Gymnastics
gym in an office park south of Denver. Shadioun arranged to rent
the place after 9 p.m. The Cossacks train nightly for two intense
hours in a warm yellow light, leaping around, thumping on the
wooden floor, while a tape deck plays folk tunes that move them.
Veronika Alimova, 21, darted away now and then last week to
check on her baby, Cristina, almost 4 months old. “This is just
the beginning,” she said, cradling Cristina. “We hope to perform
on big stages here in the future. I want to spend all my life
dancing. I trained for so many years.”
In embroidered costumes, black boots and blue soldier caps,
chanting “Hey,” they ignited an otherwise silent suburban
nightscape of neon-lit car lots, warehouses, satellite dishes and
exits.
They miss home.
Stanislava Perets said she regularly phones her 7-year-old
daughter, Anastasia, – left with grandparents – asking about
school, promising they’ll be together soon if immigration
applications are approved.
Yuriy Abramenko, 39, yearning for his wife, clings to a
conviction that, among nations, “America is best. Beautiful. Every
citizen respects the law. This is a country of immigrants.” All
these Cossacks need “is a chance to show people our spirit.”
Nearby, blue TV light blinked inside airy pastel homes of
the Coloradans the Cossacks hope to reach. The group performed 13
times in December, but in small venues.
Now, Russian Cafe owner Eugene Valershteyn has discovered the
dancers. He hired them to perform Saturday nights at his
red-walled Russian Cafe at Orchard Road and University Boulevard.
Well-heeled Americans are his main clientele. At a recent
performance, they watched raptly, clapping, some standing on
chairs. Russian emigres Olga and Michael Novikov sat in the cafe
that night. They marveled as the Cossacks danced, nearly kicking
tables with their boots. Olga had seen them years ago in a large
Moscow theater. She cringed to think how they must feel to perform
in a tiny restaurant.
When she saw their passionate faces, she understood. “They
can’t live without dancing,” she said. “It is love.”
January 5, 2001 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Migration
Restaurant leads Ethiopian to better life
Restaurant owner Haime Asfaw, 40, fled Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
during a civil war in 1982. She resettled in Los Angeles, where
she supported herself and her son by working in a bank. She
attended college, too.
But when her son, Michael, grew into a teenager, she worried
about his safety in Los Angeles. “We didn’t have gangs in our
country. That was the reason I moved to Colorado – to give him a
better life.”
Starting in 1992, Asfaw worked in a Denver typewriter shop,
then a bank, then as an accountant at Denver International
Airport. Gradually she settled into a city that felt cosmopolitan
yet relaxed, with a diverse population and good weather. In 1997,
she rented an old shop and began selling Ethiopian spices to other
immigrants. A year later, she renovated that shop at 3504 E.
Colfax Avenue and turned it into the Arada Ethiopian Restaurant.
Newspaper reviewers rate her food highly.
Michael, 22, now studies at Metropolitan State College. Asfaw
misses Ethiopia – her relatives and culture – and visits when
possible.
But more and more customers are demanding the spicy meats and
vegetables she prepares according to ancient traditions her mother
taught her in Africa. “My mother deserves all the credit,” Asfaw
said Thursday at work.
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
