After more than 40,000 migrants arrived in Denver in less than a year, city officials are now struggling to help both the new arrivals and serve their taxpaying residents amidst skyrocketing rents and an ongoing housing shortage.
A self-described sanctuary city, Denver has found shelter for the migrants, helped their kids get into schools, provided emergency food assistance and taught them how to fill out paperwork.It's a vast, expensive effort in a city unaccustomed to managing such challenges.
And now cracks are beginning to show in the city's generosity.
Denver has already spent more than $60 million aiding the migrants, and officials are planning budget cuts to keep the aid flowing. A hastily built coalition of churches and nonprofits has stepped in to help, but several surrounding cities have refused to assist or accept migrants.
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"We overextended a while ago," said Ismael de Sousa, a longtime Denver bakery owner who grew up in Venezuela and has struggled with whether to open his own home to newcomers. "It's tricky because you don't know who you're opening your door to for an indefinite amount of time."
In Denver, the newcomers have erected ramshackle tent cities near upscale apartment buildings, flooded medians to offer windshield-washing services and staked out street corners with signs begging for money. Unlike migrants arriving in years past, most of the newcomers are penniless Venezuelans without the typical informal social support system that can find them housing with friends or family and get them work under the table.
De Sousa, 39, said he's seen a steady stream of migrants seeking work at his Reunion Bread bakery, even though they have no baking experience, no English, and no permission to work. He said it's heartbreaking to turn them away, knowing they have few options. He recently organized a community fundraiser to feed migrants.
"I had to do something," he said. "But I'm just a small baker so there's not a ton I can do."
Many of the migrants have been bused to Denver after crossing the Mexican border, shipped 600 miles north via Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star, which disperses migrants to sanctuary cities. Abbott's efforts have put Denver on the frontlines of the nation's emotionally charged immigration debate. City officials said Denver has received more migrants per capita than any other big city outside Texas in the past year.
In his State of the Union speech on Thursday, President Joe Biden urged Congress to pass an immigration-reform law toughening border controls while speeding up the process by which migrants receive hearings to determine whether they can remain in the United States. Republicans killed a bipartisan border bill in February that aimed to achieve those goals.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to launch widespread deportations nationally if reelected, and has accused migrants of "poisoning the blood of our country."
Biden said such language demonizes migrants, and that the United State should remain a welcoming country: "We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new."
For many Denver residents, the migrant arrivals are an increasingly obvious population in a city that is markedly whiter, wealthier and better educated than the country as a whole. Some Abbott supporters say that's the whole point of the operation: forcing Americans to personally grapple with the problems caused by the nation's broken immigration system.
The migrant arrivals have pitted neighbors against each other, and prompted Democratic mayors like Denver Mayor Mike Johnston to demand Biden's administration respond more forcefully. In January, Johnston said the city was on track to spend 10% of its entire annual budget aiding migrants, although it has since scaled that back.
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