This Venezuelan migrant can’t vote in the election. But the results could change her future

Denver (CNN) — Diocelina Querales ducks into the corner of her bedroom.

Space is tight, and she bumps her head on the sloped ceiling as she sits down at her desk.

Her back and feet are aching after standing all day and packing boxes at a warehouse. And her mind is racing with worries about her family’s future.

It hasn’t been long since a man who could once again become America’s president spoke before a cheering crowd 10 miles away from her home and declared vicious Venezuelan gangs had taken over the community. On that day weeks ago in Aurora, Colorado, former President Donald Trump claimed most migrants who’ve come to the US in recent years are criminals, and that Venezuelans particularly have “infected” Aurora.

Diocelina is Venezuelan. She arrived in the US last year. Soon afterward, she was scrubbing toilets, vacuuming floors and hauling huge bags of trash as she cleaned 22 classrooms at an elementary school in Aurora every night.

Trump’s words do not tell her story. Hearing them fills her with dread.

But right now, the 51-year-old mother and grandmother doesn’t have time to dwell on any of this. Her brother is out driving for Uber. Her son is a mechanic fixing cars at a workshop down the street. Her daughter-in-law is cleaning a construction site in a town that’s nearly an hour away. Her mother is downstairs, resting. Her grandchildren could be home any minute. Their new puppy is calmly curled up in the corner. And Diocelina is rushing to record a dozen social media videos while the house is still quiet and peaceful.

It is time for her to do what she does most of the time: work.

“Let’s say that Trump wins, and he sends us back — we’d leave with nothing. No, that’s a bad idea,” Diocelina tells me in Spanish. “You have to keep trying to do other things, to keep searching for other things to do. And your salary isn’t enough. … That’s why I’m trying to do this.”

Under the flattering glow of a ring light, Diocelina smooths her blonde highlights into place, holds her cell phone in her outstretched arm, looks at the camera and flashes a smile.

The Diocelina Querales you might see on social media looks dramatically different from the bedraggled and desperate woman our CNN team first met in May 2023 at the US-Mexico border.

Today she’s wearing makeup, laughing and looking for lifehacks to share with her online audience on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. She’s working on building a following, and building her confidence, by posting enthusiastic videos reacting to clever do-it-yourself crafts, new recipes and surprising cleaning techniques. One of her go-to expressions is shouting out “Wow” as she marvels in wonder.

Back in 2023, her hair was streaked with gray. Her eyes were red. And at a moment when many migrants were filled with uncertainty and anxiety, Diocelina was sobbing so loudly that even people across the street knew instantly that something was very wrong.

Diocelina had made it into the United States. Her brother and mother had, too. But that day in Brownsville, Texas, she’d just learned her daughter and 2-year-old grandson had been sent back to Mexico. And she was frantically searching for her daughter-in-law and two granddaughters, worried they had suffered the same fate.

They’d all crossed the Rio Grande together, many clinging to an air mattress. Thousands of others were crossing then, too, rushing to reach the US before the Biden administration made a major policy change. Title 42, the public health order imposed by President Trump during the Covid pandemic, had led to millions of migrant expulsions at the border while both leaders were in office. But word that it was ending inspired more people to cross out of fear that immigration laws would be enforced more harshly afterward.

“People went crazy crossing,” Diocelina said at the time.

On the streets of Brownsville, she saw many people with a similar story. Venezuela’s cratering economy, she said, sent most of them seeking opportunity in the US.

“Venezuela has been left empty,” she said.

By the end of 2023, there were more than 7 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants globally, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. The agency calls it “the largest forced displacement crisis ever in Latin America.” Last year more than 300,000 Venezuelans crossed the perilous Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, a common route for migrants bound for the United States on foot.

Diocelina and her family were among them. It took them a month and a half to trek through seven countries and reach the US-Mexico border.

As harrowing as her first days in the US were, Diocelina says now things are going far more smoothly. She reunited with her daughter-in-law and granddaughters a few days after we met her. Her daughter and grandson managed to cross the border a few months later. Now all seven family members she first crossed the border with are in Colorado — somewhere she’d never imagined living.

At first, they’d plan to resettle in Chicago, where Diocelina’s son was waiting for them. But they only lasted two weeks in the Windy City.

“We couldn’t find anything,” Diocelina says. “There was no work.”

A friend of her son’s told him things were better in Denver. So the family packed up and drove across the country to the place that’s become their new home.

Every day Diocelina thanks God for the family members who are here alongside her: her mother Diana, 68; her brother Francisco, 37; her son Randy, 32; her daughter Angie, 24; her daughter-in-law Yuri, 33; her granddaughters Railismar, 8, and Yuriacny, 15; and her grandson Fabian, 3.

She also never stops thinking of one family member who isn’t here with them.

Her younger son, Ángel, should be 26, and he should be in Denver, too. But last month marked the 10-year anniversary of his death.

Diocelina says police officers in their Venezuelan town kidnapped and killed him. To this day, she says, they haven’t paid for their crimes.

“This is something huge for me, very intense,” Diocelina said, her voice trembling, in a recent video she shared on social media. “I’m here meditating a bit, by this tree, thinking so many things. But life goes on. I hope my son is in a beautiful place somewhere.”

The year Ángel died was the worst year of her life. Diocelina says she never would have survived without the love and care she received from family and friends — and the guidance of a psychologist.

“He helped me so much. Because sometimes you think ugly thoughts. You see a car and want to throw yourself in front of it,” Diocelina says. “He told me, ‘You have to think of your other children, about your mother and your father. Just like the death of your son is hurting you, losing her daughter would hurt your mother.’”

Over the past year, as Diocelina and her family tried to navigate life in her new home, she sensed Ángel’s presence, keeping them safe.

“Sometimes I pray to him, if he’s in heaven, to give me a lot of strength,” she says. “I feel like he’s helping me.”

Diocelina didn’t know there’d be so many Venezuelans here. Officials said some 40,000 migrants arrived in Denver in less than two years — describing it as the highest number of new arrivals per capita of any city in the US.

The city of 750,000 people was overwhelmed, with some families camping out in the cold under an overpass. As officials raced to handle the influx, budget shortfalls forced the city to cut from other areas to make up the difference.

But any strain the city was dealing with at the time wasn’t evident to Diocelina.

City officials placed them in a migrant family shelter at a Comfort Inn.

“They took very good care of us,” she says.

And within a few days, Diocelina managed to find a job packing shipments at a nearby warehouse.

The white concrete building was massive and austere. But Diocelina knocked on the glass door anyway.

“You have to knock,” she says. “I always say, knocking is how you enter.”

By the end of the day, Diocelina, her brother and daughter-in-law had a three-month contract to work there.

She couldn’t believe their good fortune. But even with jobs lined up, there were many unexpected twists to come in her family’s journey.

Diocelina and her family heard the sound of gunshots.

They dove to the ground. Police sirens blared.

Outside, one of her neighbors was on the ground. He’d been shot in the leg, and the pool of blood around him grew. To Diocelina, it looked like a terrifying scene from a movie.

She knew life in the US would be difficult, but she hadn’t expected this.

“It was horrible,” she says, recalling the September 2023 shooting. “I’d never heard something like that so close.”

Diocelina has heard some of the things Trump says about Aurora, too, like the gangs he claims have taken over the city, which borders Denver. Like Colorado’s governor and Aurora city officials, she says it’s an exaggeration. But she sees a kernel of truth in it, too.

“There are some Venezuelans who have made such a mess,” she says. “They have behaved very badly.”

Diocelina says her family moved out of the Aurora apartment building as soon as they could. The violence that day, and the loud music pulsing from neighboring apartments on the weekends, was too much to bear.

Months later, city officials shut down the building, citing code violations. Hundreds of people were evicted. And the landlord, facing criticism, said Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua street gang was to blame.

Another building owned by the same landlord drew national attention in August after footage from a resident’s security camera captured armed gunmen roaming the halls.

Police have rejected theories that Tren de Aragua has taken over any buildings in the city.

Diocelina says it’s a small sliver of the migrant population, but she fears it’s having a large impact on how Venezuelans are perceived.

“Because of a few people’s actions, all of us are paying,” she says.

It’s been nearly a year since Diocelina and her family moved into a three-bedroom house in Denver. They pool their income to pay rent.

They’ve managed to fill their house with donated furniture. Their backyard is full of bicycles and battery-powered cars her grandson, Fabian, can ride when he visits (He lives nearby with Diocelina’s daughter, Angie).

During the week, the seven family members who live in this house scatter across the Denver area like seeds in the wind — each adult doing a different job, sometimes two.

Sundays are a time to spend together — praying as they hold hands at the dining table, eating a hearty stew and arepas, lounging on the living room couch while a telenovela plays on Netflix that no one is really watching, sitting on chairs in the backyard and chatting with their neighbors.

On the Sunday when we arrive, Diocelina’s mom, Diana, is leading efforts to prepare a meal in the kitchen, where a key rack that says “Love” hangs on the wall. Diana is the only adult in the family who doesn’t have a job. For a while, she tried making and selling empanadas, but she stopped after police told her she needed a permit. She tells me she’s had a hard time adjusting to life in the US.

“It’s so cold here. I can’t get used to it,” she says. She thinks a lot about returning home.

“Paw Patrol” is playing on the TV in the living room, and nearby a two-month-old Rottweiler puppy named Skye is chasing her tail and trying to gnaw on a bottle cap.

Diocelina’s granddaughter, Railismar, named their family’s new pet after a character in the popular children’s show.

Getting a puppy a few days ago has added a layer of chaos to their home — but the dog is a sign of stability, too.

Compared to the uncertainty of last year, Diocelina’s life is far more predictable now. But she knows how quickly that can change.

And even on the calmest days, the words and whims of politicians thousands of miles away are weighing on her.

When she thinks about a recent decision by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government, Diocelina’s eyes well up with tears.

Officials recently declared that Venezuelans with expired passports who’d left the country wouldn’t be allowed to return without obtaining a special permit from the government.

Diocelina thinks about the passport she keeps tucked away. It’s expired, and she has no way to renew it.

She thinks about how much her mom wants to go back to Venezuela, and how she’d hoped to help her return.

She thinks about her aging father, and her husband, and her siblings, who still live in Venezuela.

She has video calls with her husband every day and dreams of living together with him in a house by the beach.

Leaving behind so many beloved family members was difficult, but she’s always viewed her departure as temporary.

The heartbreaking possibility that now she might never be able to return has become her greatest fear.

Another worry: Conversations at her warehouse job keep turning to one topic — Trump and his repeated promises of mass deportation.

“Do you think he’s going to win?” Diocelina asks.

She’s heard rumors that if Trump’s reelected, he’ll do away with Temporary Protected Status, the policy protecting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans like her from deportation. She doesn’t want to live in the US forever, but right now she sees it as her only economic option. She needs a way to earn enough money for her family.

She worries about what would become of her home and her car and her dog — the life she’s building — if she’s forced to leave before she’s ready.

Diocelina says a Mexican coworker who’s been in the US for decades tries to reassure her.

“She says, ‘They said they were going to do that before, and it didn’t happen. Don’t believe that. Don’t think that.’”

If Diocelina could speak with Trump, this is what she’d tell him: “In all countries there are all kinds of people. That’s not just true of Venezuelans. You shouldn’t generalize. Because I think that there are more hard workers than bad people. Clearly there are many more of us who came to work, to search for a future, to launch ourselves forward, to see if we can make our dreams come true.”

Diocelina is trying to stay calm, but she still fears she could lose everything, just as she’s starting to find her footing.

Diocelina leaps up from her living room couch when she sees a package arriving from Amazon.

“I can’t wait to read it,” she says as she rips open the white envelope. “I heard it’s good.”

In Venezuela, Diocelina regularly devoured novels by Brazilian author Paolo Coelho. In the US, she’s become a devotee of self-help books that help her push forward no matter what obstacles she faces.

Sometimes she wakes up early so she can read them, undisturbed, outside beneath the morning sky.

The book that just arrived is a Spanish-language version of a self-help classic: “Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude.”

“The powers of the mind are infinite,” the book says on the back cover.

“Thomas Edison did more than 10,000 experiments before he came up with the light bulb,” one page reads. “But after each failure he suffered, he continued looking for something more, until in the end he found what he was looking for.”

These lessons are inspiring to Diocelina. She is looking for something more, too.

On their long trek from Venezuela — much of which they traversed on foot — Diocelina did her best to keep up her family’s spirits even on the toughest days. She stopped herself from crying many times so the others would keep going forward.

In Denver, she’s taken on a similar role. After painful injections leave her mom in tears during visits to the doctor, Diocelina tries to cheer her up. She makes TikToks dancing with her 15-year-old granddaughter, Yuriacny. She calls friends and former employers to help family members find work.

But Diocelina says it’s harder now to get a job quickly, even when you have an in.

That’s why her daughter, Angie, is driving for Uber while she waits for a full-time position to open up somewhere.

In Venezuela, Diocelina worked for years as a school gym teacher, then turned to selling what she could to make ends meet. She made barely enough to buy food.

Since her arrival in the US, Diocelina’s tried her hand at many jobs — cleaning the Aurora school, picking up scraps at construction sites, painting apartments and selling home-made empanadas with her mom.

A few months ago, she landed full-time work back at the warehouse where she first started. Her old boss called with an offer for her and her brother as soon as something opened up.

Diocelina was thrilled to leave her part-time job at the school behind. Cleaning 22 classrooms was exhausting, and the late-night hours were rough.

Now she’s making $19 an hour. Soon, she’s hoping her social media posts will start supplementing her income.

Having only one job is enough to survive, Diocelina says. But it’s not enough to get ahead.

At home in the glow of her ring light, Diocelina’s voice is bright and cheery as she records a rapid-fire series of reaction videos.

“Look at this spectacular tip for not losing your earrings!”

“This girl has a very pretty way of putting on her hat. How different. Beautiful!”

“Wow, look at this door! What do you think?”

Across various social media platforms, Diocelina only has a few thousand followers. But she hopes with time, that will grow, and she’ll start to earn an income from her posts. She’s been taking online classes from a mentor to learn how to be a content creator and build her brand.

She’s still working up the courage to get more personal.

Months ago, she shared videos of her first time eating soup in a bread bowl, and a family skiing day trip. More recently, she joked about how she struggles to understand when people speak to her in English – a language she wants to learn but hasn’t had time to study.

And she shared a video that shows her walking through the warehouse where she works, barcode scanner in hand.

“La Vida en la USA” plays in the background. It’s a Spanish-language rap song about the hard realities of immigrating to the US, performed by a Honduran who came in a 2018 migrant caravan.

From the first day that you arrive

That a day without work will be a day without eating

That the day you don’t pay your rent

Sadly, brother, they’re going to kick you out

Around 9 p.m., with her video posts done for the night, Diocelina’s workday is finally over.

Her phone chimes with a new message.

Lately she’s been seeing her phone for its potential as a possible money-making tool. But it’s also a window into the life she left behind.

The message is from her nephew. It’s a photo showing a full plate of food.

Days ago, he’d written to her and said he hadn’t eaten in days.

Diocelina sent him $20 — all she could spare. She has so many expenses in the US, and so many family members relying on her, but she tries to do what she can.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, tia,” her nephew’s message says. “You don’t know how grateful I am.”

He’s in southern Mexico, trying to reach the United States.

Diocelina’s heard it’s even harder now than it was when she and other family members made the trek last year. There are more gangs preying on migrants along the way, she says, and more restrictions blocking them from crossing the border.

She hopes her nephew will make it. And she hopes that if he does, she’ll still be in the US to help him.