FORT MORGAN, Colo. — Magdalena Simon’s only consolation after immigration officers handcuffed and led her husband away was the contents of his wallet, a few bills.
The hopes that had pushed her to trudge thousands of miles from Guatemala in 2019, her son’s small frame clutched to her chest, ceded to despair and loneliness in Fort Morgan, a ranching outpost on Colorado’s eastern plains, where some locals stared at her too long and the wind howls so fiercely it once blew the doors half off a hotel.
The pregnant Simon tried to mask the despair every morning when her toddlers asked, “Where’s papa?”
To millions of migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border in the past few years, stepping off greyhound buses in places across America, such feelings can be constant companions. What Simon would find in this unassuming city of a little more than 11,400, however, was a community that pulled her in, connecting her with legal council, charities, schools and soon friends, a unique support network built by generations of immigrants.
The Fort Morgan migrant community has become a boon for newcomers, nearly all of whom arrive from perilous journeys to new challenges: pursuing asylum cases; finding a paycheck big enough for food, an attorney and a roof; placing their kids in school; and navigating a language barrier, all while 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 a thousand Somalis arrived to work in meatpacking plants in the late 2000s. In 2022, grassroots groups sent migrants living in mobile homes to Congress to tell their stories.
In the last year, hundreds more migrants have arrived in Morgan County. More than 30 languages are spoken in Fort Morgan’s only high school, which has translators for the most common languages and a phone service for others. On Sundays, Spanish is heard from the pulpits of six churches.
The demographic shift in recent decades has forced the community to adapt: Local organizations hold monthly support groups, train students and adults about their rights, teach others how to drive, ensure kids are in school and direct people to immigration attorneys.
Simon herself now tells her story to those stepping off buses. The community can’t wave away the burdens, but they can make them lighter.
“It’s not like home where you have your parents and all of your family around you,” Simon tells those she meets in grocery stores and school pickup lines. “If you run into a problem, you need to find your own family.”
On a recent Sunday, advocacy groups organized a posada, a Mexican celebration of the biblical Joseph and Mary seeking shelter for Mary to give birth and being turned away until they were given the stable.
Before marching down the street singing a song adaption in which migrants are 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 stiffer asylum rules.
A century ago, it was sugar beet production that brought German and Russian migration to the area. Now, many migrants work inside dairy plants.
When area businesses were raided several times in the 2000s, friends disappeared overnight, seats sat empty in schools and gaps opened on factory lines.
