They came to America in search of a better life and better schools. The results were mixed

“It made me feel better,” says 13-year-old Alisson.

Outside the classroom, it’s a different story. While this school system is struggling to accommodate more than 3,000 new students, mostly from Venezuela and Colombia, city officials have taken the opposite approach. The City Council tried to dissuade Venezuelan immigrants from moving to Aurora by promising not to spend any money to help the newcomers. Officials plan to investigate nonprofit organizations that have helped migrants settle in suburban Denver.

When Aurora’s mayor spread baseless claims that Venezuelan gangs had taken over an apartment complex, former president and current GOP candidate Donald Trump exaggerated the claims at campaign rallies, calling Aurora a “war zone.” He said immigrants are “poisoning” schools in Aurora and elsewhere with disease. “They don’t even speak English.”

Trump has promised that Aurora, population 400,000, will be one of the first places to launch his migrant deportation program if elected.

This is the life of a newcomer to the United States in 2024, home of the “American Dream” and conflicting ideas about who can achieve it. Migrants arriving in this polarized country are confused by its divisions.

Many came in search of a better life for their families. Now they wonder if it’s even a good place to raise children.

Of course, it’s not always clear to Alisson’s family that they live in a separate city called Aurora, with its own government and rules that differ from those in neighboring Denver and other suburbs. One thing seemed obvious to her mother, Maria Angel Torres, 43, as she moved around Aurora and Denver looking for work or running errands: While some organizations and churches are willing to help, some people are deeply afraid of her and her family,

The fear first surfaced in the spring during a routine trip to the grocery store. Torres was standing in line, holding a jug of milk and other items, when she got a little too close to the young woman in front of her. The woman – a teenager speaking Spanish with an American accent – told Torres to keep her distance.

“It was humiliating,” Torres says. – I don’t look like a threat. But people here act like they feel terrorized.

And when Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman – and then Trump – started talking about Venezuelan gangs taking over the apartment and the entire city of Aurora, Torres didn’t understand. Although she did not believe that the gangs had “taken over”, she was worried that the bad press about Venezuelans would affect her and her family.

It’s important for Torres to stay away from dangerous people. The only reason her family left Venezuela was to escape lawlessness and violence. They didn’t want it following them here.

In addition to Alisson, Torres has an older daughter – 27-year-old Gabriela Ramirez. Ramirez’s partner, Ronexi Bocaranda, 37, owned a food truck that sold hot dogs and hamburgers. Bocaranda claims that government employees in Venezuela extorted him for a bribe called “vacuna,” or vaccine, because paying it provides protection from harassment. He paid them the equivalent of $500, or about half a week’s wages, to continue operating.

The following week, when Bocaranda refused to pay, government workers stabbed him in the bicep; a one-inch scar remains visible on his left arm. The men threatened to kill Ramirez and her son, who were both at the food truck that day. Bocaranda sold the company and the entire family, including Torres and Alisson, fled to Colombia.

A little over two years later, the family traveled north on foot through the Darién Pass. In Mexico, they crossed the border in Juarez and reported to the US Border Patrol. They all have deportation hearings in 2025, during which they will have the opportunity to present their asylum case based on the threats against Bocaranda, Ramirez and her son. Meanwhile, they settled in Aurora after hearing about the Denver area from a family who helped them travel to the U.S.

Torres and her daughter tried to enroll their children in school shortly after they arrived in Aurora in February, but were confused by vaccination requirements. Would children be able to enter school with the vaccines they received in Venezuela and Colombia, or would they have to receive all new vaccines? Would they have to pay for each one, which could cost hundreds of dollars per child?

Alisson and Dylan stayed at home for months. Dylan played math games or first-person shooters. Alisson watched crafting videos on TikTok. When they finally went to school in the fall, Gabriela Ramirez and Torres hoped that instruction would be in English, believing that this way their children would learn the language faster.

If they had arrived in Aurora, say, three years ago, this might have been what they encountered.

Aurora is used to educating immigrant children. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, more than one-third of residents speak a language other than English at home. Immigrants and refugees are attracted to Aurora’s proximity to Denver and its relatively lower cost of living.

But the sudden arrival of so many students from Venezuela and Colombia who didn’t speak English caught some Aurora schools by surprise. Previously, a teacher in a school system with 38,000 students might have had one or two new students in her class. Currently, teachers in some schools have as many as 10 students, or one third of their students.

When Marcella Garcia visited classrooms that spoke only English, she noticed that the new students did not speak. “Kids were left out and couldn’t engage,” says Garcia, principal of Aurora Hills High School.

Schools turned to district headquarters for advice and training, which recommended a strategy called “translanguage.” This means that you sometimes use Spanish to help students understand English lessons and the conversations going on around them.

It’s not clear how much it helps students learn – it’s too early to tell – or whether the school strikes the right balance between translating for novices and forcing them to engage in what teachers call a “friendly fight” for understanding and learning English.

However, this approach helped Alisson feel more at ease. On her first day of school, her social studies teacher, a bald man with tattooed forearms and a gruff teacher, didn’t translate anything or use Spanish in his presentation. “I thought about just sitting there and not saying anything,” Alisson recalled. “But then I thought, ‘I’m here to learn.'”

She and a friend approached the teacher during class. Now Jake Emerson is one of her favorite teachers.

On a Wednesday in September, Alisson and her friends sat at a round table in the back of Emerson’s classroom. They talked to each other in Spanish while Emerson told the rest of the class about a drawing he was projecting on a large screen in front of the class.

It was a scene from an ancient Egyptian marketplace. “What do you think this guy is doing with the basket?” Emerson asked the class. The students at Alisson’s table continued to talk even as Emerson spoke. One girl, who had been in Aurora schools longer than the others, translated for Alisson and the other teenagers.

Before the school adopted this new approach, teachers could interrupt conversations between students in Spanish. “If I saw two students speaking Spanish, I assumed it was off-topic,” says assistant principal John Buch. Now he says students are encouraged to help each other in any language they can.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be much public opposition to this approach in the district. This usually requires more work from teachers who have to translate materials or their own statements in real time.

While teachers try out new Spanish vocabulary, English-speaking students show a variety of responses. Some seem bored or annoyed by teachers’ sudden interest in speaking Spanish in class. Bilingual students seem proud when they can help teachers who want to use Spanish more in the classroom.

Still, some English-speaking and bilingual students harassed Alisson. A few weeks into school, a group of boys tried to stop her from sitting in her seat in class. They called her ugly and told her to go back to her country. When Alisson reported this to her teacher, nothing changed. “They say they don’t tolerate bullying,” he says. “But this is abuse.” A few weeks later the boys finally stopped.

After spending most of the day in mainstream classes, Alisson and her new peers took part in a class titled Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. These are the only classes that are specifically designed to help new immigrants speak English.

Teacher Melissa Wesdyk is not fluent in Spanish. She recently started using Google Translate occasionally as a simultaneous translator. He speaks instructions on his laptop, and a vaguely robotic voice gives instructions in Spanish.

The same is not available in Amharic or Persian, languages ​​spoken by two of the more than two dozen students in the class. For these two, he translates written instructions and displays them on a screen at the front of the room.

Wesdyk rarely smiles and remains serious during classes. Perhaps this is because the students are much more unruly than in the other Alissons. Wesdyk admits there is relative chaos, but says it’s because Spanish-speaking students feel more comfortable in a classroom that is almost entirely made up of Latin American immigrants.

One of the boys stands on a chair during class, and Wesdyk interrupts the class at least four times to redirect him. “Por qué hablas?” – she asks him. Why are you talking? Other times he says, “I have to stop.”

The course also demands more from students, whom Wesdyk encourages to jointly pronounce words and answer questions. It’s hard work, and her methods don’t always work.

At the end of class, Wesdyk tells the class that they are going to make a “whip”. Google doesn’t know how to translate it, so it just repeats the word in English. Each student is asked to share one of the words they wrote earlier when the class identified the English words for each letter of the alphabet.

When Alisson suggests the word “pink” instead of the letter P, Wesdyk seems surprised and a little nervous. “It’s not one of the words I wrote down, but it’s a good word.”

For the letter F, another boy says “flor,” which means flower in Spanish. To observers, it appears that he is trying to say “flower” but mispronounces it. Wesdyk doesn’t seem to understand. “Floor?” – she replies to him. The boy repeats “flor” and Wesdyk replies, “Floor?” emphasizing the sound of the English R. The boy looks embarrassed.

In mid-September, Alisson’s mother receives messages from Aurora Public Schools with rumors of bomb threats at the school and other schools across the state. It is unclear whether the threats are related to Trump’s rhetoric about Aurora being taken over by Venezuelan gangs. After all, similar problems arose after his false comments about Haitians eating animals in Springfield, Ohio.

School system communications indicate that the bomb threat rumors are not true, but that doesn’t make Torres and Alisson feel any better. Torres continues to send Allison to school despite her fear. She has learned that she could get in trouble if Alisson misses class without a good reason, and Alisson is generally happy at school.

But neither of them understands how American schools and children can be targeted, even if it’s just a rumor.

“This doesn’t happen in my country,” Torres says.

Venezuela’s economy and democracy may be in shambles, Torres says, but no one would dream of threatening children at school.