Big burden of migrant influx strains Denver
DENVER — In his first six months in office last summer, the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, managed to get more than 1,200 homeless people off the streets and into housing. That seemed like a fitting feat for a city that prides itself on its compassion.
It would turn out to be a footnote compared with the humanitarian crisis that Denver would soon face as thousands of migrants flooded the city, many of them bused from the southern border by Gov. Greg Abbott, of Texas, and almost all of them in need of shelter and support.
By last month, Denver, a city of 750,000, had received nearly 40,000 migrants, the most per capita of any city in the nation, even as the flow of migrants slowed in the deep chill of winter. And the city has begun to feel the same sort of strains that have confronted New York and Chicago as they contended with their own migrant influxes.
Denver, the state capital and the center of a sprawling metropolitan area of more than 3 million people, has spent more than $42 million on the migrants. If expenditures continue at the current pace of $3.5 million a week, the crisis could cost the city about $180 million in 2024, or 10% or more of its annual budget.
The city has begun discharging dozens of families from hotels that it rented to house them temporarily, creating fresh hardship for those being displaced. And last week, the city began imposing a first round of budget cuts unrelated to migrant services, starting with reductions in parks and motor vehicle services.
Likemayors in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, Mr. Johnston had been making increasingly desperate requests for help from the White House and Congress.
But the pleas were largely unheeded, with only $9 million authorized in federal reimbursements for Denver. And after a proposed deal to address the migrant crisis collapsed last week in Washington, Denver finally buckled.
“We are going to have to make changes to what we can do in terms of our city budget and what we can do in terms of support for newcomers who have arrived in the city,” Mr. Johnston said on Feb. 9.
The mayor, who served in the state legislature and has run for governor and the U.S. Senate, is keenly aware that voters may begin to question whether too many resources are being devoted to the newcomers, a sentiment he has already encountered in some quarters.
Mr. Johnston said he was determined to strike a balance. “We want to continue to be a city that does not have women and children out on the street in tents in 20-degree weather,” the mayor said. “And we also want to provide all our constituents with the services they deserve and the services that they expect.”
DJ Summers, director of policy and research at the Common Sense Institute in Denver, said Denver faces a daunting path forward. “Our city’s resources are going to be depleted trying to help these people,” Mr. Summers said. “If this situation continues to worsen, it will absolutely exacerbate the impact on Denver’s taxpayers and city services.”
The mayor blamed Denver’s predicament on Republican leaders in Congress who rejected a proposal negotiated by one of their own senators and supported by President Joe Biden. It would have curbed border entries and bolstered funding for cities like Denver.
“If that measure had succeeded,” Mr. Johnston said, “there would not be a crisis.”
Like a host of other U.S. cities, Denver does not allow local law enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants solely on the basis of their status and does not turn them over to federal authorities unless a judge has issued an arrest warrant.
This isn’t out of character for the city, which has been led by Democratic mayors for more than half a century (though the office itself is nonpartisan). But it made Denver a target for Mr. Abbott, a third-term Republican who has sought to export the border problem his state faces to so-called sanctuary cities.
In 2022, he began dispatching migrants to Washington, New York and Chicago. Last May, he added Denver to Democratic-led cities he has singled out. When Mr. Johnston took office two months later, Denver was sheltering about 400 migrants, most of them Venezuelans fleeing their homeland’s economic collapse.
But through the fall, the pace of buses and migrants rapidly accelerated. In early January, the number of migrants in city-funded hotels hit 5,000, and many of them were without immediate prospects of securing steady work. To become eligible for work permits, migrants must apply for asylum, a cumbersome process, and then wait 150 days.
Some have found off-thebooks jobs in construction and housekeeping. Others have hit the streets, selling flowers and brandishing squeegees to wash car windows. But the money they’re earning is hardly enough to make rent and buy food.
During a visit last month to a hotel housing migrants, Mr. Johnston drew anguished pleas even before he made it inside. “I’m not here to beg at a traffic light. I came to work,” a man in a red sweatshirt said.
People cried out that they would do any honest job and that they were not asking for charity.
The mayor, a fluent Spanish speaker who taught immigrant high school students before entering politics, leaned into the crowd and explained that only the federal government could provide work permits.
There were employers in hospitality, construction and others sectors hungry for their labor, if only the newcomers had work authorization. “If I could, I would give you a job now,” Mr. Johnston told one man.