Mayor Mike Johnston has hired immigrant rights advocate Sarah Plastino to head up the Newcomer Program for the Department of Denver Human Services, leading a gargantuan effort to help the thousands of new immigrants who continue to arrive in Denver.
She will be overseeing the response to what the Johnston administration acknowledges is its greatest challenge yet: the arrival of newcomers, many unable to work and currently living without homes in a city where he's trying to end homelessness.
"As our city continues to find solutions to a humanitarian crisis, Sarah's leadership will guide a proactive approach to support new arrivals with the resources they need to succeed," Johnston said in a statement. "Denver is a city built on diversity and inclusion, and Sarah joins our commitment to ensure all people, regardless of their background, have an opportunity to thrive."
Plastino's job will to be work across city departments, with nonprofits and others to welcome immigrants and help integrate them socially and economically into the city.
According to the position description, the job pays between $110,216 and $187,367. For this, Plastino will establish a vision for the city's newcomer programming, work with city and state agencies, nonprofits, advocates, philanthropy groups and others to fulfill the program's goals.
She will collaborate with research institutions to see how other cities are addressing the arrival of new immigrants and analyze what Denver needs, and she will also oversee funding and contracts, working with all levels of government and the private sector, too.
She will be in charge of meeting with City Council members and overseeing a Newcomer Advisory Council, while managing her staff.
Plastino has a breadth of experience as an advocate, an attorney and an entrepreneur, but little to no experience working inside municipal government.
Plastino, who has lived in Denver since 2017, has spent the past fifteen years working with immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as a human rights lawyer and advocate. For four years, she represented immigrants detained in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center in Aurora.
She's been on the board of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition's CIRC Action Fund, founded the Asylum Law and Advocacy Practicum at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and has advocated for more legal services for immigrants across Colorado.
She's most recently worked as a legal and policy consultant to groups like the Tahirih Justice Center, the Afghan Asylum Project and the American Immigration Council.
Her new job will be her biggest act yet.
Currently, the mayor acknowledges the city's response is not sustainable.
Johnston's slashing departments' budgets to pay for his efforts and reestablishing deadlines for how long new immigrants can stay in shelters.
Flowers won't be planted, rec center hours have been cut and Parks and Rec summer camps are closed.
Meanwhile, new immigrants are being pushed out of city-run hotels into bitter cold and uncertain futures with overtaxed nonprofit advocates scrambling to house and care for as many people as they can. Many new immigrants are unable to work as they wait for authorization or are no longer allowed to apply.
In many cases, the city is paying for bus tickets to send new immigrants to other cities across the country and threatening to take legal action on them if they are washing car windows or sleeping on the streets.
Still, the mayor says the city is welcoming.
"I am so thankful for the opportunity to contribute to the remarkable effort underway to meet the basic human needs of newcomers in Denver," Plastino noted in a statement. "I look forward to working with Mayor Johnston to strengthen the city's ability to welcome newcomers in a way that is both safe and sustainable."
Since taking office, Johnston has created new positions to oversee his key efforts, and Plastino's role is one of those.
Early on, he brought on longtime homeless advocate Cole Chandler to lead the mayor's House1000 effort to bring 1,000 people from the streets inside.
Plastino's position will be charged with similarly turning a crisis into a manageable part of municipal government. It will also give relief to Anne-Marie Braga, the current head of the Department of Human Services who has been overseeing an already overtaxed, understaffed department and the city's massive response to newcomers.
Though the city has already spent $42 million on the crisis, this is just the second full-time hire to work on the effort, said Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for the Department of Human Services. He was hired as a contractor a few months back and just became salaried staff in the past few weeks.
"Most of the positions around this response have been either redeploying active city workers, redirecting workers or hiring on positions which don't come with benefits," Ewing said.
Needless to say, Ewing and other city staff feel some relief to have a full-time person dedicated to stabilizing the response.
