On a snowy Saturday afternoon in February, about a dozen children from the Denver metro area ran soccer drills in a church basement. They practiced zig-zagging through cones, shooting goals and dribbling the ball down the field. They ended with a low-stakes scrimmage, players in orange and yellow vests angling for control of the ball as their parents cheered from the makeshift sidelines.

Unlike a typical soccer skills clinic, however, this one was coupled with some quick Spanish lessons. Dribble the ball with “el lado del pie,” the side of the foot. Stop the ball with “la planta del pie,” the bottom of the foot. One concept transcended languages: “Goal” sounds essentially the same in both Spanish and English, and the accompanying cheers and claps are a universal sound.

It was the third soccer clinic led by Juan Pirela, Jeison Pirela and Rene Alarcón, former professional soccer players from Venezuela who are three of about 40,000 migrants who have flowed into Denver since the end of 2022.

The brothers — Alarcón is married to Juan and Jeison’s sister — said their teaching method is about full-person development, not just soccer skills. Just as their professional coaches helped them back home, they want to help their students become well-rounded players and people.

“It brings us a lot of joy to teach them and develop this program here. We never want to be separate from football. We always want to be there as either trainers or players, but we always want it in our lives,” Juan Pirela said in Spanish through an interpreter.

“We consider Colorado our home now,” he said.

They are among thousands of families from Venezuela that have arrived in Denver over the last year in pursuit of a better life, fleeing poor economic conditions and political turmoil in their home country.

Yet when they entered the United States in September and made it to Colorado, they met the grim reality of an immigration system overworked and overwhelmed by people from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and other countries in South America. They are stuck in a legal limbo as they wait for work authorization but face the mounting costs of setting up a life along the Front Range: rent, groceries, lawyer fees and everyday expenses to stay clothed and housed.

Once someone submits their application for political asylum, which the Pirela family said they did right as they entered the country, they must wait 150 days to apply for a work authorization from the federal government. It can then take another month for the authorization to actually come through. They are not legally allowed to work while they wait.

That forces many asylum seekers into an informal, underground economy to earn money during the monthslong process.

Many offer services like car and house cleaning, food sales, tiling and drywall work, yardwork, moving labor and snow removal — ad hoc work that does not involve a formal employment structure. They, or an English-speaking person assisting them, post their availability in Facebook groups for Denver-area migrant support created by community members. Some know people in the area who are happy to facilitate jobs. Others take an analog approach and head to stores like Home Depot in search of day labor gigs.

“Technically, any form of income being earned by an immigrant without authorization is against immigration regulations, and that could cause problems later in their case. But it’s not an immediate concern for many of these people — they won’t get picked up by (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). They won’t get arrested for selling things,” said Ashley Cuber, an immigration attorney with the Aurora-based firm El Refugio.

Yet it is nearly impossible for migrants to survive the months waiting for a work permit without trying to earn money, she said.

“Immigrants are 100% purposely put in an impossible situation,” she said. “The government is not unaware that people need to work, and it’s not a fluke that the regulations state that they’re not allowed to. The system is very much designed to force these people to work and then punish them at a later date.”

Mayor says long-term stability is key

For some, like Alarcón and the Pirela brothers, their skills and experience transfer in obvious ways for creative entrepreneurship in their new home. The three played professionally for over a decade for various club teams in the Venezuelan soccer leagues, including the national team. Even as elite professional athletes, however, they did not earn enough money to support their families.

“We were playing at the club level, but there were payment delays and they weren’t paying us enough to live off of. As a family, we decided to give that up for our children’s future,” Alarcón said.

So far, they have hosted three donation-based open soccer clinics. That early February clinic made a dent in the $1,800 monthly rent they pay for an apartment near Empower Field that houses nine people.

“The thing they need most is a way to make income,” said Reid Bryan, who has helped two families, including the Pirelas, navigate resources in Denver. “It seems ridiculous that we can’t get the infrastructure in place. This is a young, motivated, skilled workforce. Denver needs the labor, so we should be able to put two and two together.”

One woman who traveled with the Pirela family from Venezuela to Colorado earns money by teaching cooking classes on traditional Venezuelan dishes like arepas and flan. She also recently began advertising for a house-cleaning service.

“We understand and know that people are going to do anything they can to take care of themselves and their families, whether it is authorized by the federal government or not,” Denver Department of Human Services spokesperson Jon Ewing said. “We’ve always known that there are folks without work authorization working in this country.”

Denver has spent about $42 million on temporary shelters and other services to support migrants since the end of 2022. Mayor Mike Johnston recently announced that he urged departments to cut their budgets in order to pay for migrant support and that the city will scale back some migrant services, an attempt to balance city services with the necessary financial burden to stave off a humanitarian crisis.

Johnston, along with other mayors in heavily affected cities, advocated for not only more federal aid to help with immediate needs like shelter but also for a broader reform of the immigration system to allow migrants to more easily gain work authorization. That is key to long-term stability, he argues.

“What we do know is that there is a clear path to what does work. All that is required is a clear act of courage from the Congress that cities need to be successful. That is, for us, work authorization so that folks arrive with the ability to do what they want to do, which is work to support themselves and their families,” Johnston said in January during a visit to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of Congress.

Johnston was a supporter of the bipartisan immigration bill that failed in early February and would have expedited work authorization for asylum-seekers and shortened the asylum claim process.

Without major federal policy intervention, cities are limited in how much they can help migrants beyond basic services like shelter, food and transportation to other cities. They cannot legally grant work authorizations, for example, or hire migrants to work city jobs, though exasperated city governments could find themselves doing just that despite the potential legal consequences, as U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado suggested to reporters during a recent visit to Aurora.

Instead, Denver is identifying the people eligible to work legally and getting them in the system. The city hosted two clinics in February, following multiple pre-screening sessions, to help people file work authorization permit applications. Those clinics were meant to assist 400 people who are already eligible for work authorization but had not submitted an application due to finances, the complexity of the paperwork or a language barrier.

Ewing said the city plans to host more clinics, prioritizing those who are close to a mandatory exit date from a city-run shelter. The state has an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to waive application fees for people who apply for employment authorization in the city’s process.

While many migrants are in the same situation as the Pirelas — stuck between an asylum application submission and work authorization — others have not yet applied for asylum, which is a highly technical and complicated process that generally requires a lawyer and can run thousands of dollars per person.

Some Venezuelans who entered the country before July 31, 2023, are eligible for temporary protected status under a one-time expansion from the Biden administration. That makes them eligible to apply for a work permit.

Another, almost certainly smaller group entered the country by registering through the government-run CBP One app, which limits daily registrations and gives a specific date to cross the border. Anyone who managed to go that route could immediately apply for work authorization. But the app is rife with problems, and Cuber said fewer than 10% of her clients entered the country that way, since it often involves a calculation of whether it is safe for a family to remain across the border in Mexico for many months to wait for a CBP One opening.

Denver does not keep up-to-date data on how many people in the city fall under each status.

And even with eligibility, expense can still be a barrier. Once all the fees are added up, a work permit application costs north of $400.

“Not many immigrants that I know have 400-plus dollars laying around when they cross the border,” Cuber said.

Edgar entered through CBP One late last year. He said he is saving money to apply for a work permit, but his priority is to send money home to family still in Venezuela. He and Cristian, another Venezuelan migrant in the process of applying for asylum, sell dog leashes made from donated climbing rope. They have been relatively successful, selling about 50 leashes at $25 each during one market.

Creative entrepreneurship

Ana arrived in Denver with her husband and 8-year-old son in December, and she has not yet applied for asylum, she said. Back in Barquisimeto, a city in northwestern Venezuela, she ran a small business selling party decorations and handmade gifts. Now, she is trying to rebuild that gift shop in Colorado by selling her creations — intricate arrangements with stuffed animals, chocolates and flowers made with ribbon and adorned with rhinestones — in person and through social media.

“I had my business, and it was established for about four years. But people (in Venezuela) don’t have access to buy a lot of things, so even though I offered a lot, I couldn’t make enough money,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Professionals do not make a living wage in Venezuela, so we came to the United States in search of better opportunities.”

A week before Valentine’s Day, Ana sold gifts in various sizes, ranging from $8 for a single rose to $70 for a bouquet of roses and a large sunflower, at a pop-up maker’s market for migrants at Stanley Marketplace in Aurora. At a previous market, she said she made about $200 in sales, but that was before a big Valentine’s Day push.

Andres was studying systems engineering at a Venezuelan university when he and his partner, Angelica, decided to come to the United States. The two are living with a Denver family, providing home health care services in exchange for accommodations. Because they do not have rent costs, they are saving money for lawyers to help with their asylum case.

The two said they have been successful in finding work. They sold dog treats at the Stanley Marketplace event, but a lot of their income comes from selling pan de jamón — Venezuelan ham bread typical for Christmas and holiday celebrations. In December, they sold over 250 loaves for $20 each. Since then, word-of-mouth created a snowball effect: They catered a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at a Denver elementary school and scheduled a large cooking class for local professors.

Eventually, Andres said he wants to finish his degrees and Angelica wants to earn her high school diploma. Their ultimate goal is to live on a ranch, raising animals and growing their own food.

When speaking with Colorado Newsline, migrants shared a desire to do things the “right” way to enable their goals in the United States.

“Our plan is to be a good example for others who are immigrating here. We want the government to see us as that, as a good example who came here to do good, to form this academy as professionals and impart all of our experience onto youth,” Juan Pirela said.

Looking ahead, he wants the future to include the ability to work legally, a thriving business and stability for his family — as well as a trip to see Denver’s professional soccer team in action.

“Por supuesto,” they said when asked if they planned to see the Colorado Rapids.

“Of course.”