By Shari Rendall
FAIR
Denver recently cut $5 million from public services to provide shelter, health care, schooling and other services to the nearly 40,000 new illegal aliens that have besieged Denver over the past year. These public service cuts are in addition to the $25 million ($15 million building remodel and $10 million from a contingency fund) that were already diverted last month from the city’s budget to address the migrant crisis.
Decreases to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Denver Parks and Recreation will comprise the $5 million in public services cuts. As part of the cost-cutting measures, DMV satellite offices will alternate closing one week at a time and local residents will no longer be able to renew their vehicle registrations in person. Additionally, Denver Parks and Recreation will slash their spring programs by 25 percent and regional recreation centers will be open only six days a week instead of seven (note: local and neighborhood recreation centers will be forced to reduce their hours but will continue to operate six days per week).
Despite the new reductions, even these cuts will not be enough to address the overarching crisis caused by Biden’s immigration policies. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says the city may be on the hook for an additional $180 million in 2024 and has asked every office from the police department to the Clerk and Recorders office, which oversees the 2024 election, to make cutbacks.
In his speech announcing the changes to public services, Mayor Johnston blamed Republicans and former President Trump. “Despite broad bipartisan support, I think [former President] Trump and Republican leaders saw this as a chance that if this bill actually passed, it would have successfully solved the problem facing cities and the border, and they would have rather seen it fail, so they could exacerbate these problems, extend the suffering of the American people and of newcomers for their own electoral changes this November,” he said.
However, the bipartisan bill Mayor Johnston referred to would have codified bad immigration policy and ratified ongoing illegal immigration at historically high levels. The now-scuttled bill would have left existing law in place which allows the Biden administration to release illegal aliens it encounters at the border. The legislation also would have done nothing to alter or stop the President’s illegal use of parole. Finally, the unworkable proposal would have appropriated billions of dollars to NGOs and Homeland Security to continue the administration’s unpopular open-borders policies.
Instead of acknowledging Denver’s sanctuary status and President Biden’s border crisis as the root causes of the influx of migrants into Denver, and then working to repeal the city’s sanctuary policy, the solution Mayor Johnston touted was more funding for his city grappling with the crisis — and work authorization for illegal aliens. “We are a welcoming city, and we also don’t want to cut core city services. But, right now, we’re in this dilemma where we can’t get any help from the federal government on work authorization or on controlling entry or on the ability to actually provide resources to cities,” Johnston commented.
Johnston clearly doesn’t blame the migrants themselves for coming to Denver uninvited. In a recent speech the Coloradan said, “I want it to be clear to Denverites who is not responsible for this crisis that we’re in: The folks who have walked 3,000 miles to get to this city.” He also added that Denver will do its part to be welcoming and help aliens “find their way”, but that the federal government has not done its part by supporting the city.
Denver became a sanctuary city in 2017 when then Mayor Michael Hancock issued Executive Order 142 in opposition to former President Trump’s illegal immigration stance. As the first major city north of El Paso, Texas with policies that act as a magnet for illegal immigration, it is unsurprising that Mayor Johnston now claims the city has attracted more migrants per capita than any other city in the nation.
