Denver's far-left Democratic mayor has garnered national attention for President Joe Biden's generous support for illegal immigrants, but local homeless residents are being abandoned as the burden of caring for illegal immigrants soars. It's still there.
Mayor Mike Johnston recently maxed out his bravado level, calling out city police to physically oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to fulfill President Donald Trump's deportation mandate. I promised to use it. But after just one day, he realized he was going backwards.
The turning point came after incoming border czar Tom Homan promised to overcome any resistance from Deep Blue sanctuary cities and states to court-ordered repatriations.
Homan stands in the way of ICE after Johnston puts on a 'warrior' kick by warning President-elect Donald Trump that he will use the Denver Police Department (DPD) to fight ICE He warned that this was actually against the law, saying: It is a felony to harbor or conceal an illegal alien from ICE. Please read the statute. Don't cross that line. ”
The next day, Johnston sheepishly claimed that his earlier rant about using DPD had given him the “wrong image” and sought to undo it to some extent.
“Would I have gotten it back if I could? Yes, I probably wouldn't have used that image,” Johnston said. saidaccording to WKUSA-TV.
“That's the image we want to avoid. What I was saying is, this is the outcome we want to avoid in this country. I don't think any of us want that.”
Meanwhile, marginalized Americans in Denver say they are being left behind because Johnston is steering taxpayer dollars toward immigration.
For example, Tim Rogers from Denver said he has been waiting years for housing assistance because immigrants who don't even belong in this country have been pushed out before him.
“That's not fair,” he said. said ProPublica. “We let our staff do what they had to do, meet with case managers, try to get housing. When they ask to buy shoes, there's an uproar.”
“I'm sorry to say this, but I know we're all human, but to me it's unfair,” he continued. “In our day and age, you would go to the police and be told, 'There's a place for you,' which meant prison,” Rogers said. “They never threw us on a bus or took us to a motel.”
Citizens like Rogers also need jobs. But in June, the Johnston administration celebrated a program that forced undocumented workers ahead of local residents.
“Our goal was to turn what people saw as a crisis into an opportunity,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told the media, adding:
Our cities bring people with skills, talent, and discipline who desperately want to work. There are employers in the city who are hungry for employees, and they desperately want to hire them. What we wanted to do was take people who wanted to work and connect them with training and skills centered around the jobs we needed most. So what we did was we created the first program of its kind in this country: the Asylum Seeker Program.
But even as actual citizens feel ignored and uncared for, Johnston continues to shove his face in front of national news cameras and burnish his illegality promoters with integrity. For example, Mr. Johnston walked back his statements about using police against Mr. Trump, but said he was willing to face the possibility of being arrested for violating the law.
“Yeah, I'm not afraid of it and I'm not looking for it,” Johnston told the media. “I think the goal is to be able to negotiate with rational people how to solve difficult problems.”
Denver has welcomed Biden crossers for nearly two years, starting with the first buses arriving in December 2022. Since then, Mr. Johnston appropriated More than $100 million to provide immigrants with free housing, medical care, food, education, clothing, legal advice, and other services. And Johnston predicts the city could be on track to spend more than $180 million by the end of 2024.
As more and more immigrants entered the Mile High City and expenses continued to rise, resources began to shift from citizens to immigrants. Mr. Johnston began pulling funding from essential services like police and firefighters to pump more cash into immigration.
But the Johnston administration's shifting priorities left the city's actual residents out in the cold, in some cases literally.
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