FORT MORGAN, Colo. — Magdalena Simon's only consolation after immigration officials handcuffed and led away her husband was the contents of his wallet, a few banknotes.
The hope that had driven her to trudge thousands of miles from Guatemala in 2019, her son's tiny body clutched to her chest, gave way to despair and loneliness in Fort Morgan, a ranching outpost on Colorado's eastern plains, where some locals stared at her for too long. and the wind howls so violently that it once blew half the doors of a hotel away.
Pregnant Simon tried to mask her despair every morning when her toddlers asked, “Where's daddy?”
For millions of migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border in recent years and stepped off greyhound buses in places across America, such feelings can be a constant companion. What Simon found, however, in this modest town of just over 11,400 residents was a community that drew her in and connected her to legal counsel, charities, schools and, soon, friends, a unique support network built by generations of immigrants.
In this small town, migrants build a quiet life, far from big cities like New York, Chicago and Denver, which struggle to house asylum seekers, and from the halls of Congress where their future is being debated during negotiations.
Fort Morgan's migrant community has become a boon to newcomers, almost all of whom emerge from a perilous journey to new challenges: pursuing asylum cases; finding a salary big enough for food, a lawyer and a roof; taking their children to school; and overcoming a language barrier while simultaneously facing the threat of deportation.
The United Nations used the community, 80 miles (129 kilometers) west of Denver, as a case study for rural refugee integration after 1,000 Somalis arrived in the late 2000s to work in meatpacking plants. In 2022, grassroots groups sent migrants living in mobile homes to Congress to tell their stories.
Hundreds more migrants have arrived in Morgan County in the past year. More than 30 languages are spoken at Fort Morgan's only high school, which has translators for most common languages and telephone service for others. On Sundays, Spanish is heard from the pulpits of six churches.
The demographic shift of recent decades has forced the community to adapt: local organizations hold monthly support groups, train students and adults about their rights, teach others to drive, ensure children go to school and refer people to immigration attorneys.
Simon now tells her story herself to those who get off the bus. The community cannot wave away the burdens, but it can lighten them.
“It's not like home where you have your parents and your whole family around you,” Simon tells those she encounters in supermarkets and school pick-up lines. “If you encounter a problem, you have to find your own family.”
The work has grown amid negotiations in Washington, D.C., for an agreement that could tighten asylum protocols and strengthen border enforcement.
On a recent Sunday, advocacy groups organized a posada, a Mexican celebration of the biblical Joseph and Mary who sought shelter for Mary to give birth and were turned away until they were given the stable.
Before marching down the street and singing a version of the song about migrants seeking shelter instead of Joseph and Mary, participants signed letters urging Colorado's two Democratic senators and Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck to reject stricter asylum rules.
A century ago, it was sugar beet production that brought German and Russian migration to the area. Now many migrants work in dairies.
When several area businesses were robbed in the 2000s, friends disappeared overnight, school seats were left empty and gaps appeared in factory lines.
“That really changed the understanding of how deeply entrenched immigrants are in the community,” said Jennifer Piper of the American Friends Service Committee, which organized the posada celebration.
Guadalupe “Lupe” Lopez Chavez, who came to the U.S. alone from Guatemala in 1998 at the age of 16, spends long hours working with migrants, including helping Simon connect with a lawyer after her husband was arrested.
On a recent Saturday, Lopez Chavez sat in the low-ceilinged office of One Morgan County, a nearly two-decade-old immigration nonprofit. Sitting in a folding chair, Maria Ramirez flipped through manila folders from November 2023, when she arrived in the U.S.
Ramirez fled central Mexico, where cartel violence claimed the life of her younger brother, and asked Lopez Chavez how she could get health care. Ramirez's four-year-old daughter — who pranced behind her mother, blew bubbles and popped the bubbles that landed in her brown curls — has a lung condition.
Ramirez said she would work anywhere to move from the living room they sleep in, with only a blanket on the floor for cushioning.
In offices that resemble a beloved hostel common area, Lopez Chavez warned Ramirez to consult a lawyer before applying for health care. Sitting next to Ramirez were two established migrants who offered support and advice.
“A lot of things you heard in Mexico (about the U.S.) were that you couldn't walk on the streets, that you had to live in the shadows and that you would be targeted,” Ramirez said. “It's wonderful to come into a community that is united.”
Lopez Chavez works with new migrants because she remembers cuffs wrapping around her ankles after she was stopped for a traffic violation in 2012 and turned over to U.S. immigration authorities.
“I just wanted to get out of there because I had never been in a cage before,” Lopez Chavez said in an interview, as her eyes filled with tears.
At her first court hearing, Lopez Chavez and her husband were on their own. At her second hearing, after Lopez Chavez was connected to the community, she was flanked by new friends. That wall of support allowed her to keep her chin up as she fought her immigration case before receiving residency last year.
Lopez Chavez is now working to cultivate that strength throughout the community.
“I don't want any more families to go through what we went through,” said Lopez Chavez, who also encourages others to tell their stories. “These examples give people the idea that if they can take their case and win, maybe I can too.”
In Fort Morgan, train tracks separate a mobile home park, where many migrants live, and the town's older homes. Some older migrants see that newcomers receive better treatment by the US and believe that is unfair. The community cannot solve every challenge and has not yet laid the final stone for cultural bridges between the various communities.
But at the posada event, crowded at One Morgan County offices, the assurance of the community itself was visible through the eyes of partygoers as children in cultural regalia danced traditional Mexican dances.
Among those bouncing around the long room was 7-year-old Francisco Mateo Simon. He no longer remembers the trip to the US, but his mother Magdalena does.
She remembers how sick he got as she carried him the last few miles to the border. Now he spits out armadillo facts between the cusps of the incoming front teeth in their mobile home, then points to his favorite ornament on their white, plastic Christmas tree.
“That's our brand new tree,” his mother said, as her eldest daughter practiced English with a children's book.
“It's new,” she repeated, “it's our first new tree because before we only had trees from the thrift store.”
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Bedayn is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.