After aid runs out elsewhere, some migrants relocate to places like Salt Lake City, where they find help but hurdles, too. “Consider another state,” says a flier distributed by Utah.
After traveling to the Texas border from Venezuela with their two sons, Selene and Alvorado crossed into the United States last September and were soon on a bus chartered by the state of Texas. Bound for Denver, the couple expected that Alvorado would quickly find a job and they would begin building a new life. But like so many of the other migrants arriving in the United States, Alvorado could not work legally and was competing for odd jobs with other migrants in the same predicament.
But an untold number are on the move again after trying to establish themselves in New York, Chicago, Denver and other Democrat-run cities that initially welcomed migrants. When assistance ran out in those cities and the migrants could not find jobs, they moved to places like Salt Lake City, Seattle and even a tiny town in Montana, often aided by bus or plane tickets paid for by the cities they were leaving.
Nearly 19,000 cases were filed in the first seven months of the 2024 fiscal year, and that total does not include migrants whose cases are still logged in the cities where they first arrived. “To be clear, Utah is not spending any state resources to house or provide other basic services for illegal immigrants or asylum-seekers,” he said.
Fights have broken out in Home Depot parking lots as migrants hustle to be hired by contractors and homeowners who pull up offering a few hours of work — painting, gardening, moving boxes. Migrant families with young children have been spotted at encampments alongside homeless adults with mental-health and drug-abuse issues.
The Road Home, a nonprofit group that operates the center, has tried to accommodate most migrant families, but funding restrictions for people who are not residents of the United States, coupled with capacity constraints, prevent it from helping all of them. There are 100 people on the wait list.