Denver has received over 38,000 illegal immigrants since the day of President Joe Biden’s term. Since December of 2022, there have been roughly 200 arrivals per day.
Yet, Denver’s Democrat mayor is welcoming new illegal arrivals with open arms, despite the city being at its breaking point.
Mayor Mike Johnston told CNBC’s “Cities of Success” that he wants Denver to become a “welcoming city” for illegal immigrants.
CNBC host Carl Quintanilla asked Johnston if the city was “too open and too generous illegal aliens— to which the mayor responded by saying that it’s a “balance.”
“We want to be a welcoming city,” Johnston stated. “[But doing that without federal help] requires shared sacrifice, it requires compromise. So, we are both making cuts to city budgets to meet this financial need, and we are making cuts to the amount of services we can provide to the migrants that arrive and to the number of folks that we can serve.”
The mayor also said he wants to provide the city’s hard-working taxpayers with high-quality public services, saying that achieving both requires “shared sacrifice and compromise.”
However, the illegal immigration crisis is costing the city millions of dollars with not much left over to support U.S. citizens residing in Denver.
Denver spent upwards of $46 million on immigrant shelters and resources in 2023. The city has had to secure housing for more than 4,000 aliens through 900 leases and provide them with more than 700,000 meals, resulting in the average cost being about $4 million per month. City officials have previously stated that they are expecting the costs for 2024 will be around $180 million.
“We are both making cuts to city budgets to meet this financial need, and we are making cuts to the amount of services we can provide to the migrants that arrive and to the number of folks that we can serve,” Johnston said.
“We figured out how to run this machine, how to welcome people, get them connected to legal clinics, provide them wrap-around resources,” he continued. “To do that well just requires resources, and so, our challenge is, we can do it well with federal help, we can do it well with more work authorization, we can do it well with a coordinated plan for entry. Without any of those three, the work becomes tougher. But we’ve now doubled down, assuming there’s no federal help coming, and we’re going to figure it out on our own.”