AURORA | Manuel Mendoza spends most days waiting on a gritty sidewalk near the corner of East Colfax Avenue and Dayton Street, looking for odd-jobs to support his family, who he says have lived in Aurora for 27 years.
“Right now, I’m waiting to help two guys move,” he says, pointing to a 16-foot-wide yellow truck he owns that’s parked across the street. It’s about 9 a.m. and Mendoza has been standing in front of the Iglesia Evangelica church with about 20 other men since 7 a.m.
He says men start standing at the corner as early as 5 a.m., especially the ones who want to work laying cement. Mendoza says most jobs only last a few hours, and that the mostly Spanish-speaking men will return to the corner more than once during the day to look for more work in order to make at least $100, or enough to survive on until tomorrow.
In Aurora for more than a decade, the intersection of East Colfax and Dayton has served as a popular place for day laborers to congregate and wait for employers to pick them up.
Mendoza, who says he has two moving jobs already set up for the day, seems much more relaxed than the others. He says the fact that he owns a truck gives him an advantage in setting up work in advance.
The safety of drivers and day laborers has often come into question, as the men will dart from one side of the street to the other to catch a potential employer as they drive by.
City officials are hashing out the details of a proposal that could make that corner safer after efforts to move the workers somewhere else in the city failed.
Mendoza and the dozens of others who wait daily on the same Aurora corner don’t have many amenities, and he says they will either use a nearby alley for a bathroom or a lone bodega that sits on an empty parking lot facing them.
Debi Gurung, a Nepalese resident who leases the miniature storefront with white bars on it for her grocery business, says someone clogs the store’s toilet on a weekly basis. That’s in addition to what she refers to as a toilet paper overuse problem.
But she says the biggest issue, is trash that gets thrown around the outside of the store.
“We’ve had so much trash that we got a ticket from the city, a $200 fine,” she says.
Still, Gurung and the day laborers are on friendly terms.
One man comes into the store and after asking if the coffee is ready, grabs a broom and offers to sweep the front entrance.
“They’re our customers. We trust them,” she says.
Aurora City Councilwoman Sally Mounier, whose ward encompasses the corner where the day laborers congregate, has proposed that the city purchase the empty parking lot as one way to clean up the area and provide temporary amenities such as a construction trailer and porta-potties for the workers.
She said at a public safety committee meeting in May that the property owner would be willing to sell the lot to the city for $200,000.
“When we move them to a permanent location, the city still has a parking lot in the arts district which will benefit us longterm,” she said.
Mounier has partnered with El Centro Humanitario, a nonprofit that works with day laborers in Aurora and Denver as well as area faith organizations to establish the temporary site. The plan is somewhat of a revamp of one city officials proposed with El Centro in 2010, when the organization was housed in the former Aurora Human Rights Center farther south on 14th and Dayton. Mounier said that plan did not work out since they tried to set up a temporary worksite at the center, and most of the workers were unwilling to leave the corner they associated with picking up work.
“Part of the plan that we foresee is re-engaging day laborers out there,” said Marco Nuñez, executive director of El Centro. Nuñez said wage theft is an especially pointed issue among undocumented workers because those workers are often afraid to report the crime, and that educating workers would be a large part of the work El Centro would pursue if given a home base at the temporary site.
Easy victims are legal and illegal immigrants, either unwilling or unsure of how to report the thefts. In Colorado alone, state investigators handle more than 5,200 wage claims each year. That’s about 430 each month, though advocates for workers say those numbers and the $1.1 million state officials help workers recoup annually amount to just a tiny fraction of the wages workers earn but never see.
Bob Roth, a member of the public safety committee, agrees with Mounier’s plan but says he needs more details.
“I think about the ‘what ifs,’ “ he said. “What if it’s a city-owned facility and we have a city-owned porta-john on the property and somebody gets mugged. Do we have liability?”
Critics of the day laborer trade have also condemned employers for hiring illegal immigrants. In 2006, city officials proposed a law that would ban employers from soliciting workers in certain areas. Then in 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that it’s illegal for cities to ban people from soliciting work on the streets.
According to Aurora spokeswoman Julie Patterson, the issue will go to executive session next where the city discusses potential property acquisitions.
Staff writers Brandon Johnansson and Quincy Snowdon contributed to this story.
If you put an immigration officer there to check people’s status, the crowd would be much smaller. This is a clear example of city resources being devoted to issues caused by illegal immigration. $200,000 to buy the lot would be better put towards a park, school repairs or road improvement. Instead, the city is forced to deal with illegals with money that should go towards real citizens. For those of you that are going to say “How do you know they are illegals?”…..be honest with yourselves and admit for once that it is far more likely than not that these people are in the country illegally and stop ignoring the problem. https://www.daylaborstation.org/FAQ.htm
You took the words right out of my mouth about how you are aware they are illegals… I also have another question for you; do you prefer these individuals stay out there waiting for work or do you prefer others standing there selling drugs and women? They are at least in this country looking and wanting to work not like others that feel entitled…
I’ll agree with your point that it is preferable that they be looking for work. I’m not questioning their work ethic, rather I am pointing to the resultant drain on resources that are directed towards many aspects of illegal immigration. $200,000 could certainly be used more constructively but is now being considered to alleviate a problem caused by illegals congregating at this location. This is in addition to the strain placed on social services, schools and law enforcement.
Immigrants are an important part to the fabric of our society. U.S. companies of all sizes rely heavily on the strong labor provided by these men and women everyday. You are wrong if you think immigrants are a burden on our society the opposite is true. People that immigrant are working hard to survive and provide for their families in turn they create economy for the area, create small business and most of all provide a needed labor force. I think it is completely hypocritical and exploitative to benefit from the work of people that immigrant and turn around and make their life harder than it is. All people benefit from immigrant labor: immigrants pick our food that is transported to grocery stores and restaurants, immigrant work in restaurants working hard to get food orders out so you can eat a nice meal. I think the City of Aurora is doing the right thing in exploring this project.
As is typical of discussing this topic, you and your kind deliberately refuse to use the word ILLEGAL. You attempt to demonize my position by purposefully not using the word illegal. I have no problem with legal immigrants as members of my own family are exactly that….legal immigrants. If you are seriously proposing that illegal immigrants do not pose a disproportionate burden on society then you are unequivocally, woefully wrong.
Please take care in the future to correctly asses the topic and direct your comments appropriately.
Who is this “me and my kind” that you are referring to? I’m just another human being just like you but I see the real suffering that people are experiencing, documented or not, everyday. My mother in law does not have documents but was quickly hired by a restaurant that benefits greatly from her hard work. Many companies take great advantage of people’s need to work. She is like many others, parents that just want to provide for their families. It seems that you speak from great privilege of never being undocumented, you would see things differently if in those shoes. You just really don’t understand and should take your own advise about truly looking into a subject and learning from the people that are going through this. Finally, there is no such thing as an illegal human being, that is why I do not use that word, and I’d suggest you wouldn’t either.
You seem to have your La Raza flashcards handy with your canned responses. Please allow me to address your points in a non emotional way.
The suffering your reference in your post is experienced by both citizens and illegal immigrants alike. You seemingly disregard the idea that legal citizens should have preferential access to programs to provide them relief. When illegals enter the country and receive government benefits, it lessens the pool of available resources that should be going to legal residents and citizens. Also, by virtue of entering the country illegally, the suffering incurred by illegal aliens is self-inflicted as a result of breaking the law. Such behavior should not be rewarded.
Your mother-in-law, as an undocumented illegal, has induced another to commit a crime by hiring her. Without proof of legal status, she should not be hired at all and has put a business owner at risk by entering the workforce. The business owner, in breaking the law has engaged in behavior that puts the business at risk and if caught could face stiff penalties that may result in having to close the business. That is certainly not good for the community. Your mother-in-law’s hiring has taken a job from a legal citizen and most likely lowered wages for all. Again, not good for the community.
My so called privilege (another one of your La Raza terms) is laughable as I would never seek to enter illegally. That’s all I will comment on that as it is a foolish argument from you.
I can’t believe you used the “no such thing as an illegal human being” line. Existing as a human being is certainly not a crime but illegally entering a country, unlawfully taking tax money in the form of benefits and engaging in gang activity are illegal which are behaviors well documented to be attributed to illegal immigrants.
It’s seems you have a strong case of racism, hate and ignorance that is very detrimental to our society. It’s really sad that your hate blinds you. That hate is not good for the people around you. I don’t have time to share my knowledge about how the U.S. is responsible for the economical destabilization of other countries through Free Trade Agreements and coup d’etat that have all caused FORCED MIGRATION of people among so many things in this complex situation. So until you seek information for yourself or open your heart (which by the way there is nothing wrong with opening your heart) you will continue your hateful speech of protecting your unearned privileges and forcefully exclude others. It’s comical how you put companies in the role of victims, they have all the power in the hiring process. Well of to go hang out with my wonderful undocumented mother-in-law, that is super sweet! Au Revoir, Adios, Good-bye.
Thank you, I knew, that absent any meaningful contribution on the topic, you would undoubtedly devolve to the “racist”, “hate” and “ignorance” bail out. That is another tactic that is so essential to you and your kind. You can’t refute the truth so you stick your lower lip out and shout racist. What you fail to understand is that by overusing the term, racist no longer has any meaning and is only now considered a de facto “I can’t win so I’ll call you a name”. Please refrain from baseless ad hominem attacks and at least try to provide some reasonable justification for your position.
Perhaps the borders will be secured after the next 9/11. However, I support massive legal immigration from our hemisphere … which includes Latinos. In general, Latinos have a strong work ethic and family values. It’s difficult to get the native born young people to do a hard days labor … many of them just want to have an easy office job or go on the dole via Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability (not enough years paying into Social Security to collect SSDI) and food stamps.
Now comes the name calling, don’t like our president, well, you’re a racist! Don’t like homosexual marriage, well, you’re a homophobe, ‘racism, hate and ignorance’ It never changes, if a conservative doesn’t agree, they are named and blamed.
Your mother in law should be arrested as well as the restaurant owner.
LIBERAL, BLEEDING HEART, DEMOCRATS!!
Immigrants are welcome, illegal immigrants should be identified, arrested, and deported. We definitely shouldn’t be spending tax dollars on this problem.
I’d prefer them to be deported.
On occasion over the years I’ve used some of these guys to supplement my construction crew. After a few hours it becomes manifest which ones are worth keeping for the whole day, or several days.
horse before cart.. tail wagging dog.. blind leading blind.. what those phrases pop in mind when reading this article.. Logic is screwed up…