Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is warning the liberal city that city department budgets could be cut by up to 15% to deal with the huge costs of the current immigration crisis.
Johnston said this week that the city will need to reimburse about $180 million in expenses to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived on their own or by bus from Texas.
He said he has asked agency heads to begin developing plans to reduce the 2024 budget. He also said that 4,800 migrants in shelters means there is no space to house others at this time.
Democratic Mayor of Denver calls for federal aid amid 'unsustainable' immigration crisis: 'Solvable problem'
“We have a lot of sub-optimal options going forward, encouraging everyone to travel elsewhere, hoping they have friends and family who can stay here, but we will continue to do so. “I think we're at a very different tipping point from what we've been up to this moment,” he said Tuesday.
Venezuelan immigrants wait for food from a food truck at an immigration processing center in Denver, Colorado, on May 9, 2023. (Helen H. Richardson/Media News Group/Denver Post via Getty Images)
Johnston is one of a number of mayors calling for more than $5 billion in federal aid. The Biden administration is currently asking Congress for about $1.5 million as part of the border portion of its request for additional funding.
“I called the White House,” Johnston told “America's Newsroom” last week. “We've been communicating that we need more help from the federal government, which is why we have a supplemental budget for that.”
The city of Denver has acknowledged significant costs in response to the crisis, including $4.5 million to relocate about 12,000 migrants out of state.
Johnston called for expedited work permits, a nationally coordinated immigration system, and a coordinated effort to place immigrants across the United States.
Denver spends millions of dollars transporting immigrants to other parts of the country
“What we do know is that this works if you coordinate that admission. Cities and states that cooperate in the same way they did when they took in refugees from Ukraine and refugees from Afghanistan. We'll see if there's any. We've identified cities that have capacity and we've taken them in. We've gotten them into the country with work permits, we've given them federal aid, they've “It's been a huge success,” he said on Fox News Sunday.
Johnston's budget cuts come weeks after New York City announced deep cuts to multiple departments due to the immigration crisis facing the city. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has similarly called for federal intervention.
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Mayors also object to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sending busloads of migrants to their cities. Adams also recently filed a lawsuit against more than a dozen transit companies for placing restrictions on when and where buses can drop off passengers.
Meanwhile, the border crisis continues, with more than 302,000 migrant encounters in December alone, after hitting a record 2.4 million in fiscal year 2024.
