Denver Illegal Migrants: Six Months Free Rent is 'Insufficient'

AP Photo/Thomas Peipert

Since the beginning of the Biden border crisis, the city of Denver, Colorado has been inundated with more than 40,000 illegal migrants. That's largely the city's own fault because they hung out the welcome mat by declaring themselves to be a sanctuary city, as we previously discussed. But now the financial drain on the city's coffers has become too great and the mayor is looking to make some changes. Some of the migrants eventually moved on, but there are still at least 10,000 of them living in the shelters of the Mile High City. Mayor Mike Johnston wants to adjust the "Asylum Seekers Program"  to limit the free housing and food for the migrants to six months. But the migrants have some advocates working for them now and they are proclaiming that the offer is "insufficient" and "a slap in the face." Some of the migrants are even staging protests. (NY Post)

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A housing advocacy group is slamming Denver’s new Asylum Seekers Program as “insufficient” and “a slap in the face,” even staging a protest to voice their disapproval — as the city spends tens of millions of dollars on migrant aid and slashes its emergency services budget to stave off insolvency in the wake of the influx.

The surge of new arrivals has thrown the Mile High City’s city’s budget into a tailspin. More than 40,000 migrants have found their way to Denver since December 2022 — more per capita than any other US city — at a total cost of around $68 million.

Of those funds, approximately $35 million was spent between December 2023 and March alone, according to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s office.

The nerve of some of these people is simply off the charts. The taxpayers of Denver (and Colorado in general) have already shelled out an outrageous amount of money to care for the illegal migrants. The Denver Police Department and the Fire Department have taken a combined $10.9 million in cuts to help pay for all of this. Other cuts to public services were imposed as well.

One of the major complaints about the new "Asylum Seekers Program" is that the migrants were previously allowed to stay in the city's intake shelters for up to six weeks. Now they will be told to relocate after 24-72 hours, moving to a "congregate site." While most are being encouraged to move on to other destinations, many are not leaving. They are protesting instead.

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Just as a reminder, we're not talking about people who emigrated from their countries of origin legally and came to live in America. These are people who crossed our borders illegally and then fraudulently filed asylum claims. They shouldn't be entitled to any sort of public welfare. If they want free "lodging" it should be in a detention center while they await deportation. (Yes, I imagine we could feed them while they're locked up.) But nobody in Denver or any of the other large, blue cities are even discussing such things. They're acting as if the illegal aliens not only are fully entitled to stay here but they should be provided with free resources for as long as they wish. 

This has long since passed the point of being infuriating. If we manage to dislodge Joe Biden from office in November (and God help us all if we don't), Donald Trump needs to shut down every bit of federal funding going to the states and cities for all of this "migrant care." We'll need that cash to build more detention centers and hire more ICE officers to start rounding these people up and shipping them out. We have enough of our own people to take care of. This nonsense needs to come to an end.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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David Strom 11:20 AM | November 21, 2024
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