Members fear breaking point nears on immigration and homelessness

The tens of thousands of immigrants who crossed America’s southern border illegally and ended up in Denver have amplified the city’s rampant homelessness, resulting in an unprecedented crisis that has already cost a combined $83 million and left councilmembers “desperate” for a solution.

The councilmembers echoed Mayor Mike Johnston’s warning that the city faces a breaking point. Some worry that the mayor’s cost projection will ultimately be insufficient. One local official acknowledged that Denver’s image as a “welcoming city” has “consequences” — but that the city cannot stop the influx of immigrants has translated into a “feeling of powerlessness.”

“We are desperate for federal help,” District 5 Councilmember Amanda Sawyer told The Denver Gazette. “I’m concerned about having to come to a financial point where we might have to

reduce services that we’re providing to our tax-paying residents.”

Denver already burned through $38 million to accommodate the nearly 38,000 immigrants who illegally crossed America’s southern border and arrived in Denver. The city also spent $45 million to get 1,135 of its own homeless population out of the city’s streets during Johnston’s first months in office.

As Johnston focused on housing 1,000 of Denver’s homeless people, the city’s immigration crisis surged.

Denver’s mayor said if the current influx of immigrants persists, the city could be spending $180 million this year. That’s not counting the $50 million that the mayor also wants to spend to move another 1,000 homeless people to shelters.

As of Thursday, 37,393 immigrants have arrived in Denver, and, as shelters run out and vouchers expire, many found themselves living out in the cold streets — among thousands of Denver’s existing homeless population.

The number represents 5% of the more than 700,000 people who live in Colorado’s most populous city. Johnston said of the immigrants sent by Texas to other cities, Denver has taken in the most per capita.

No other municipality — according to the mayor’s office — has received more immigrants, in sheer number, than Denver and New York City.

The city of Chicago reported receiving 33,909 immigrants, the bulk of them from Texas. For a city of roughly 2.6 million, that represents just 1.3% of Chicago’s population.

Washington — with a population of about 671,800 people — received the third-highest number of immigrants, the mayor’s tally shows, citing Abbott’s office as part of the Republican governor’s Operation Lone Star. If accurate, the 12,500 new immigrant arrivals would represent 1.8% of those living in the nation’s capital.

Despite their status as gateway cities for immigrants, the mayor’s count for Los Angeles and Philadelphia are shockingly low: 1,300 and 3,400, respectively.

This month, Denver will conduct an annual pointin-time count of homeless, and if the immigrants remained on the streets, they would be included in the count, a mayor’s office spokesperson confirmed.

The Denver City Council, which holds the city’s purse strings, said the immigration and homelessness crises have put the city under tremendous fiscal strain.

“We also want to be a welcoming community,” Sawyer said. “The problem here at the end of the day is the federal government has failed us 100%.”

Johnston, including other city leaders, has pleaded with the federal government for more relief money. While the city has received roughly $14.1 million in state and federal funding, Denver taxpayers have assumed the brunt of the costs.

District 9 Councilmember Darrell Watson said the city’s emergency spending is necessary, as Denver officials want to make sure the newcomers don’t end up in the streets. And the spending will continue — until the federal government resolves the crisis at the border, he said.

What Sawyer fears is Denver’s spending on the immigration crisis will likely exceed Johnston’s $180 million estimate.

“This political game that is being played by the governor of Texas, and that we see being played out in Congress, is trickling down to the residents and the government of the City and County of Denver,” Sawyer said. “We had no idea that we were going to start receiving, you know, thousands of migrants more than we had been receiving.”

“We don’t have the money to pay to house them indefinitely,” the councilmember said.

Throughout the surge, the shuffling of immigrants from one community to another has been a point of contention not just between Democratic and Republican governors but also between the mayors of New York City and Chicago and Gov. Jared Polis. The mayors blasted Polis last year for busing immigrants to their cities.

Without naming Abbott, Johnston on “Meet the Press” said a coordinated entry plan for the immigrants would alleviate the stress city officials feel with “the governor of one state deciding where all newcomers go.”

Renae Eze, a spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, has also criticized Johnston.

“Instead of attacking Texas’ efforts to provide relief to our overwhelmed border communities, these Democrat mayors should call on their party leader to finally do his job and secure the border — something he continues refusing to do,” Eze said.

For the most part, the Denver City Council has backed Johnston’s homelessness strategy by funding his initiatives. But concerns from some councilmembers had grown with each vote to extend the mayor’s emergency declaration. In particular, they expressed wariness with the pace and amount of spending and what some described as the mayor’s office’s lack of transparency.

Sawyer became the first councilmember to vote “no.” A few more rejected the extension request the last time Denver’s policymaking body voted on it.

It remains to be seen if the City Council would balk at the mayor’s response to the illegal immigration crisis. What’s clear is that the councilmembers fear the crisis won’t go away, likely breaking the bank.

“At a local level, we are shouldering what is a federal responsibility,” District 3 Council President Jamie Torres told The Denver Gazette. “I think the mayor has the right figures, assuming we shelter as many migrants as we are currently sheltering, which is not a realistic number that Denver can afford to shelter in hotels in perpetuity.”

Torres added: “The City Council has asked the mayor for a plan for migrants response that thinks about this as a long-term issue and not just an emergency response effort and they are doing that hard work. ... It does not help our efforts to plan and respond in a deeply humane way when we receive an unknown number of buses each day from the southern border.”

Some councilmembers are frustrated, acknowledging their hands are tied.

“It puts us in a position that is unfair,” Sawyer said. “It’s unfair to us because we have no ability to change the work authorization laws.”

“We have taken the position that we are a welcoming city to everyone,” the councilmember said. “Yes, that has consequences. We accept those consequences. To accept those consequences, but not have any ability to change the situation we’re in right now, gives me a feeling of powerlessness.”