"It's going to help so much. I'll be on a more secure path," Alvarado says of his new Temporary Protected Status. "I'll finally be able to work now, get an ID, get Social Security, a bank account. It helps me do a lot of good things."
Alvarado, a former political prisoner and father of three, says his story is typical of any Venezuelan migrant who has come in the past few years. Nearly 42,000 migrants have come through Denver since December 2022, and about half of them are still thought to be in the metro area, according to the mayor's office.
Migrants often can't work because of their immigration status, however.
The federal government declared Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans who entered the country before July 31, 2023. Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is a longstanding designation that gives safe passage to people fleeing war or natural disaster.
For those who arrived after July 31, there are two options: work while awaiting a judge to hear their asylum cases in four to five months, or enter the U.S. on parole with U.S Customs and Border Protection and work while waiting for a judge to hear their immigration case.
The TPS threshold covered Alvarado, but it took months for him to be able to afford a lawyer to help him apply for work authorization, and his lack of English didn't help.
Alvarado grew up in Maracay, about an hour from the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, in the state of Aragua, which has "the most beautiful beaches in all of Venezuela," he says. From the time he was a kid, he wanted to be a police officer like two of his older cousins.
"I saw they had a good future," Alvarado remembers. "It was very lucrative, because the salary of an official was three times the salary of a normal person."
He became a police officer in 2003, when he was twenty years old. At the time, Venezuela was ruled by Hugo Chávez; Alvarado remembers that Chávez's socialist policies kept individuals from owning two cars but welcomed large American oil and aeronautic companies.
In 2013, Chávez died and was replaced by Nicolás Maduro. Alvarado says that right away, the change in leadership began to sink the country.
"He made the economy decline, and salaries weren't paid," Alvarado says. "And that's when they started the political persecutions."
Alvarado was a ten-year veteran on the police force when a higher-ranking officer arrested him, told him to give up his firearm and detained him for 23 months and four days in an office.
"It was turned into a cell," he says. "They put a gate over the door. They took out the windows. Twenty-four/seven, you lived there."
Luis Alvarado left behind a wife and three children in Venezuela, but now that he has a work permit, he hopes to bring them to the U.S.
Courtesy of Luis Alvarado
"You're dead but alive at the same time. Like I said to my mom while talking to her once, it's an episode in my life that I don't want memories of it to return," he recalls. "Sometimes while I'm sleeping, those memories come back, and I block them all. It's hard."
In 2017, he moved to Ecuador to work odd jobs, leaving his wife and three children in Maracay. He worked there for five years, but it wasn't steady. He reached out to a pair of cousins who had moved in 2021 to a place called Thornton, Colorado, in the United States to ask about how their immigration worked out.
His cousins convinced him that life would be easier in the United States. Unwilling to move back to Venezuela for fear of being arrested again, Alvarado moved first to Cúcuta, Colombia, in 2022 to be closer to his family and begin saving up for the journey to the U.S. via bus.
He began working any job he could in Colombia, and his family came to see him regularly. After a year, he had enough money to travel to the U.S. His family visited him one more time, in February 2023, before he set out; it's the last time he's seen them.
In April, Alvarado set out for the Panamanian border, where he took a bus across Central America to Mexico's southern border. In Mexico, he took a bus from Tapachula, a popular landing spot for Venezuelan migrants, then walked two hours to a town called Viva México, where he took a bus to Juárez in northern Mexico.
Alvarado entered the U.S. on May 9 last year through the Rio Grande outside of El Paso. He says he didn't plan on crossing illegally that day, but while down at the river to see how migrants cross the border, he saw a woman and her children begin to stumble and drown.
Alvarado rescued the two, he says, but American immigration officials detained him, assuming he was with the rest of the group trying to cross. Immigration officials held him for 23 hours before talking to him, and that's when he declared his plans to apply for asylum for him and his family.
This allowed Alvarado to enter the states legally while he waited for his asylum claim to go before a judge. It also would have made him eligible to file a Form I-765 for work authorization by October 2023.
Upon coming to the U.S., he was also given a court date, August 28, 2024, when a judge would consider whether his fear of returning to Venezuela is legitimate. If he's granted asylum, he'll be able to bring his family to Denver to live with him.
If a judge rejects Alvarado's asylum claim, he'll have to leave the country or be deported back to Venezuela.
Alvarado was allowed to select where his asylum case would be heard, so he picked Denver; he knew it would be his final destination, as he expected to find his cousins in Thornton. He told his cousins he'd been released into the U.S., but because the two worked busy schedules on a ranch, they wouldn't be able to meet him.
An immigration official bought Alvarado a plane ticket, he says, and he arrived in Denver on the night of May 10. Right away he went looking for the Auraria campus, knowing migrants were staying in a parking garage there. The next day, a bus took migrants staying at the garage to the Webb Municipal Center, where Alvarado was offered either a place to stay or a bus ticket to a different city.
He stayed in a shelter in Denver, and his cousins visited him there on May 12. They told him where they were living was two crowded and they couldn't host him. Alvarado understood, and quickly started looking for a way to provide for himself by standing outside Home Deport. He met a man who offered him work as a roofer, but the job came with a twist to get around his immigration status.
"The only way I can pay you is less than the normal wage," Alvarado remembers being told. "I can't pay you minimum wage, because if you earn the normal wage, when we do our taxes, I have to report taxes related to you."
Alvarado didn't have a problem with the arrangement. "He gave me the option, and it didn't matter. $14, $15 an hour — I'll get to work," he says. "At least I'll have something consistent."
From May to August, Alvarado had a full-time job repairing commercial and residential roofs in Colorado and Wyoming. The only town name he can remember is Aspen, but he was impressed by the Rocky Mountains.
"They are very beautiful — beautiful colors, too beautiful," he says. "All the cities I've visited in Colorado have always been a truly distinct experience."
His employer, an active member of the military, was called away in August. After the roofing job, Alvarado was hired as an independent contractor, which he says he did without having to start a business.
From August to January, Alvarado worked full-time as a car mechanic in Commerce City for $22 an hour, with up to five hours of overtime. In January, his employer got a divorce and moved to California, taking several migrants he hired with him. But Alvarado stayed to wait for his asylum case in Denver.
After January, Alvarado looked for any work he could, but it wasn't consistent. Despite the low pay of his previous jobs, he liked the routine paycheck.
"The pay wasn't high, but it was something fixed, weekly, or it was always a consistent paycheck," he says. "I would prefer to have something fixed instead of every day fighting for something that I don't know if it will give or not."
"The pay wasn't high, but it was something fixed, weekly, or it was always a consistent paycheck," he says. "I would prefer to have something fixed instead of every day fighting for something that I don't know if it will give or not."
Alvarado's asylum case was put on hold for 34 days before he would have been eligible to apply for a work permit with his Form I-765 because it was being transferred from immigration officials to a judge, he says.
He knew he was eligible for TPS, but was daunted by the application process. He needed a lawyer's help to be successful, but he couldn't find one charging less than $3,500. His English-language skills, work schedule and fear of messing up a costly application kept him from doing it on his own.
Finally, on March 20, one of Alvarado's five roommates at his Mar Lee apartment introduced him to a bilingual lawyer. She had helped Alvarado's roommate apply for TPS, and offered to do the same for Alvarado at a rate he could afford: $1,500 broken into biweekly payments of $450 in addition to a $150 initial payment.
Alvarado got a call from his lawyer on April 29, who said that his TPS application had been approved. His TPS status is valid until April 2, 2025. During that time, Alvarado is allowed to work, avoid deportation and apply for a green card. After five years with a green card, he can become an American citizen.
"At least I have the certainty that I'll be on the path to apply for another option to be able to stay in the country permanently," Alvarado says. "All I can do is work as hard as I can."
His biggest worry is "with the cold weather here, the amount of work that comes up decreases a lot," he says.
Alvarado has already applied for three jobs: maintenance for apartments and offices, roofing and vehicle mechanic.
His first year in the U.S. has gone "really well" despite the challenges, he says. He's been sending remittances to his family through Western Union to Venezuela, where the minimum wage is about $4 a month.
"The year hasn't been easy, but also not hard," he says. "I support and help my family that is still in Venezuela. Not with a lot, but at least enough to feed themselves."
Now that Alvarado has his work permit, his focus is turned toward a new goal: reuniting with his family. He hopes that he can either bring them here within a year or, if he loses his pathway to citizenship, they'll move to Honduras, because "it's the least violent country in the south."
If he returns to his country, Alvarado says, he runs the risk of being arrested again, and would face up to fifteen years in prison.
Since February, the City of Denver has helped more than 1,800 migrants submit asylum claims, according to Mayor Mike Johnston's office.
For the thousands of Venezuelans who arrived after him, Alvarado has advice for his fellow immigrants:
"Look for the best option for entering legally. Don't enter illegally anymore; look for a way in legally, because illegal entry is difficult," he advises. "All of this damages the image of the Venezuelan migrant who really wants to work."
