Denver Immigrant Group Receives Frozen Grants — and an Apology

Juntos Community, an immigrant services provider and advocacy nonprofit, has secured a sizable grant after a tenuous back-and-forth with one of its funders.

On January 20, Juntos Community accused the Denver Foundation, a 100-year-old philanthropic organization, of withholding $80,000 in grants awarded in May 2025 and asking the nonprofit to remove “undocumented” from public-facing materials.

“That process caused delays, disruptions and distress at a time when our communities are already living with heightened fear, uncertainty and risk,” Juntos Community CEO Luis Antezana said at a February 5 press conference. “Our community is in need. We’re on the ground, so we see the terror the federal government is inflicting in our communities right now.”

Since it was founded about five years ago, Juntos Community has specialized in assisting immigrants who rely on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and advocating for state laws that benefit immigrants, including 2021 legislation that allowed undocumented immigrants to earn professional licenses.

The Denver Foundation distributes several million dollars worth of grants every year. According to Juntos Community, foundation officials told the nonprofit that funding awarded last spring wouldn’t be released unless the word “undocumented” was removed from its mission statement.

Juntos Community was also asked to “change the language in our training material,” Antezana wrote in a public statement issued in January. “We were clear that our mission and vision language is non-negotiable,” Antezana added. “It belongs to our board and the communities we serve.”

The Denver Foundation explained that the requirements were part of a “due diligence” process meant to “make ourselves quieter, to be ‘safer,'” but Juntos Community saw it as “coercion,” Antezana said.

Two grants were withheld: a $40,000 community grant from the Denver Foundation, which Juntos Community had received twice before, and a $40,000 grant awarded to Juntos Community by the Denver Immigrant Legal Services Fund that was handled by the foundation.

Since Juntos Community went public with its concerns, Antezana tells Westword that the Denver Foundation has met all of its demands, including issuing an apology and promising “to convene our communities for feedback loops and preparation for increased immigration enforcement in Denver.”

The Denver Foundation released both grants on January 30, Antezana says, after he met with the organization’s CEO, Javier Alberto Soto, and a vote by a committee of the foundation’s governing board.

In response to a request for comment, Abigail Kesner, a spokesperson for the Denver Foundation, tells Westword that “Juntos received the checks last week,” and refers to a joint statement issued with Juntos Community on February 4.

“The Denver Foundation apologizes for this delay, and the resulting inconvenience, disruption and harm it caused,” the joint statement reads. “This moment underscores the need for philanthropy to empower immigrant communities to resist systems of control.”

Under President Donald Trump, philanthropic organizations like the Denver Foundation “are seeing increased demand because of the federal grants that were cut,” Antezana says. Local nonprofits with similar missions to Juntos Community have also reported losing access to federal funds.

The Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network offers free legal services and resources to immigrants, including in court and at detention centers; it says it lost $1 million in federal funding during 2025. The Village Exchange Center, a food pantry for immigrants in Aurora, reported losing a similar amount. As many as 12,000 undocumented Coloradans lost federal health insurance subsidies in November.

“From the inception, we knew that we weren’t going to get a lot of federal funding,” Antezana says. “Trump has really criminalized a lot of the areas that we support, including undocumented families.”

Antezana says that part of the message Juntos Community wanted to deliver was that philanthropic organizations should expect immigrant-serving groups to rely on them. At these times, he adds, they also expect philanthropic groups to maintain support without conceding to federal pressure.

“Our message is that we need to stand in solidarity. We live in a monumental time right now,” Antezana says. “What we will continue to push for is a philanthropic sector that stands in solidarity with immigrant-serving organizations at times like these.”

Antezana says that Juntos Community is “better than a private attorney” at helping undocumented immigrants renew their DACA status, which is granted if an immigrant arrives in the U.S. before the age of sixteen and meets certain conditions, like graduating high school and having a clean criminal record. Antezana is a DACA recipient from Bolivia.

No new DACA applications have been approved since 2021, when a federal judge ruled the program unlawful and blocked the process; at this time, DACA status can only be renewed.