Douglas County filed a lawsuit against the state Monday, alleging that two recently passed laws barring cooperation with ICE violate the Constitution.
In February 2018, Denver city leaders sent a valentine to foreigners interested in relocating to the progressive mountain city and a message to any elected officials looking to stop them.
Draped on Denver’s City and County building was a large, blue banner: “Denver ❤️ Immigrants.”
If it wasn’t clear enough, then-mayor Michael Hancock posted on social media that it was a statement of “love” to let immigrants know that Denver is “an open and welcoming city.”
Denver leaders unfurled that welcome banner six months after they passed an ordinance curtailing the city’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration agents during a Trump-era crackdown on illegal immigration. Hancock also issued an executive order at the time directing city agencies to aid illegal immigrants in Denver and setting up a legal defense fund for them.
But six years later, amid a crisis that has seen more than 40,000 migrants arrive in the city since late 2022, Denver leaders appear to have a new message for some of their so-called “newcomers”: If you stay in Denver, you will suffer.
“The opportunities are over,” an official with new mayor Mike Johnston’s office told a gathering of migrants in Spanish inside a city shelter in late March, according to a video obtained by a local television station. “New York gives you more. Chicago gives you more.”
Denver has run out of resources, he told them, offering bus fare to somewhere, anywhere else.
“If you stay here,” he added, “you are going to suffer even more, and I don’t want to see this.”
While the immigration crisis has hit Chicago and New York City hard, in large part due to Texas governor Greg Abbott’s program of busing migrants to deep-blue sanctuary cities, it has absolutely hammered Denver, which is only a fraction of their size.
In January, the city was housing and feeding almost 5,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, in hotel shelters. Other migrants slept in tents on sidewalks and in parking lots, adding a new wrinkle to Denver’s ongoing struggles with panhandling and squalid homeless camps.
At intersections throughout Denver, migrants with water bottles and squeegees head into traffic to try to make a few bucks washing drivers’ windshields.
To address a migrant-driven financial crunch, the city is now cutting hours at local rec centers, slashing park programming, and freezing hiring in some departments. To save a little money, the city has decided against planting flowers in some of its parks and medians this spring.
The migrant crisis has cost the Denver region at least $170 million, according to a conservative estimate by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute, which looked at city spending as well as school and hospital costs, and is almost surely an undercount.
So far, the bulk of the impact of the migrant crisis has been felt in Denver proper. Leaders in some neighboring communities are taking steps to keep it that way. In their mind, it was Denver’s leaders, not them, who turned the region into a migrant magnet and a Texas target.
“If you build it, they will come. If you offer services, you’re going to be a magnet,” said Mike Coffman, the mayor of Aurora, a diverse city just east of Denver.
In recent months, several cities and counties around Denver and in greater Colorado have passed resolutions asserting that they are non-sanctuary communities, moves that some have criticized as mostly symbolic but that local leaders say send an important message. In late February, Aurora leaders passed a resolution stating that they won’t use any city money to support migrants or to alleviate the crisis in Denver.
“There were a lot of questions from the public as to what was the city of Aurora doing; were we, in fact, complicit in this or were we not,” Coffman told National Review. “I do think something needed to be said that we are not a part of this.”
Perhaps no city or county has been more aggressive at pushing back on Denver’s migrant crisis than Douglas County, south of Denver. In addition to declaring itself a non-sanctuary county, Douglas commissioners just passed an ordinance making it against the law for commercial vehicles to drop off people unannounced within the county’s borders.
And on Monday, Douglas County filed a lawsuit against the state, alleging that two state laws recently passed by Democrats that limit the ability of local governments to coordinate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials violate the state constitution.
“I think we have been a leader in pushing back on every step that brought us to our occurring migrant crisis situation,” said George Teal, chair of the Douglas County Commission, who added that he and his colleagues have received little public pushback. “I’ve gotten numerous people stopping me at the grocery store to thank us for our efforts.”
A Constitutional Challenge
On Monday, Douglas County filed its lawsuit against the state of Colorado and its Democratic governor Jared Polis in Denver District Court.
The lawsuit is challenging the constitutionality of two state laws passed by Democrats in the Colorado legislature: a 2019 law that restricted the ability of local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration officials in civil cases, and a 2023 law that prohibits local governments from entering or renewing detention agreements with ICE and that prohibits them from funding immigration detention facilities owned or operated privately.
“The nation is facing an immigration crisis. The nation, the state, and local governments need to cooperate and share resources to address this crisis,” the lawsuit states, adding that the 2019 and 2023 laws in question “prohibit the necessary cooperation and create dangerous conditions for the State and migrants.”
Teal contends that “the state doesn’t have the inherent authority to limit the ability of a local jurisdiction to work with any agency, regardless be it local, state, or federal.” By doing so, he said, “the state is inhibiting the local communities, the local jurisdictions from providing for the safety” of their residents.
“We are seeing what is going on in Denver, and we do not want that coming here to Douglas County. It is not safe,” Douglas County commissioner Lora Thomas, a former state trooper, said during a Monday morning press conference announcing the lawsuit.
Douglas commissioner Abe Laydon said on Monday that the lawsuit “is about putting America first and about putting Coloradans first.” As a Latino, he said, he recognizes “the plight of those seeking refuge and asylum here in the United States,” but he added that “Douglas County is a place where quality of life comes first.”
El Paso County, which is 70 miles south of Denver and includes Colorado Springs, is joining the lawsuit. Carrie Geitner, vice chair of the El Paso commission, told National Review that the 2019 and 2023 laws have tied the hands of their sheriff in a county that has also declared itself a non-sanctuary.
But, she said, local government can still take steps to protect residents’ tax dollars.
“We don’t have to shelter folks,” Geitner said. “When we say we’re not going to be a sanctuary, we’re not going to do that. And we’ve been very clear about that.”
“El Paso County is a low-tax county,” she added. “Our residents are very specific about what they want. So, we don’t have a bunch of extra money . . . to just spend on sheltering folks.”
In light of the migrant crisis, Geitner said El Paso County is also looking at adjusting the language of federal contracts to ensure the funding doesn’t enable human trafficking.
In addition to filing their lawsuit, Douglas County also recently passed an ordinance prohibiting the drivers of buses and commercial vehicles from dropping people off unannounced in the county. Drivers who violate the ordinance could receive $1,000 fines per person they attempt to unload, and they could have their vehicle seized.
“I’m happy to give the bus back if they pay their fine,” Teal said. “If they try to blow it off, then, yeah, we have the capability to seize that property and recoup any costs that we have incurred.”
Teal said Douglas County officials have reached out to Texas leaders and requested the list of busing companies they’re using, so they can make them aware of the ordinance and let them know that “this is probably a place that they don’t want to come to.”
“If this closes the southern gate to the Denver metro area, I’m okay with that,” Teal said.
‘Just a Disaster’
Teal said he’s not aware of any buses that have dropped off migrants in Douglas County; the ordinance is one way of getting ahead of the issue. In fact, he said, they’re not aware of any migrants that have arrived in the county at all.
So far, their metrics haven’t indicated anything unusual, he said.
“We don’t believe in government that’s going to know every part of a person’s life,” he added. “So, in many ways, we don’t know what we don’t know.”
But there is evidence the migrant crisis is impacting communities outside of Denver proper.
The Common Sense Institute analysis found that the migrant crisis has cost Denver-area schools, including schools outside of the city, at least $84.6 million, and local hospitals have incurred at least $27 million in additional migrant-related expenses. The hospital figure is almost surely an undercount, because it only includes costs for two of the metro area’s 17 hospital systems for a short period of time, said DJ Summers, the institute’s research director.
They are trying to get data from other governmental entities and other segments of the economy — including costs to private businesses and nonprofits — to get a better picture of the true impact of the migrant crisis in Denver, Summers said.
Summers said the migrant crisis has had a “huge impact” on the region, and it has definitely affected communities outside of Denver proper.
“If you look at public school enrollment, that’s the biggest dead giveaway,” he said. “Jefferson County, Adams County, the school districts in those counties have absorbed lots of migrant students. So, we do know there is lots of spillover happening.”
In late January, El Paso County officials raised alarms when a bus transporting migrants arrived in their community; it was the first known drop-off there. The mayor of Colorado Springs, Blessing “Yemi” Mobolade, a Nigerian immigrant, tried to tamp down concerns.
But Geitner said there is good reason for concern. In late March, about two months after the bus arrived, a regional emergency management leader informed El Paso commissioners that more than 500 migrant students have recently enrolled in local schools, and local hospitals have reported a sharp uptick in patients from outside the country.
Geitner said local schools are stretching their resources to absorb migrant students, and that “affects every kid, not just the ones that are new.” As for the costs incurred by local hospitals for treating uninsured migrants, “no one is paying those bills,” she said.
Despite its vow not to pay to shelter migrants, some have come to Aurora anyway.
In late 2023, Denver leaders began housing about 400 migrants in an extended-stay hotel in Aurora. To make room for them, the hotel pushed out low-income residents, some of whom had been living there for months. One of those residents told a local television station that after he was kicked out, he had to live in his 1997 Lincoln with his partner and his dog.
“It was just a disaster,” said Coffman, the Aurora mayor. “I told [Denver mayor Johnston] we can’t do any more of this, and when the vouchers expire, I need you to take the people back that you put there.”
‘Costing Us Dearly’
The number of migrants arriving in Denver and living in city shelters has dipped considerably in recent weeks — there are now fewer than 1,000 in city shelters, according to the city.
It’s unclear if that slowdown will continue, or if there will more waves of arrivals. Summers compared tracking the migrant crisis to tracking waves of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We don’t know when or if it’s going to get better. We don’t know when or if it’s going to get worse,” he said. “And we don’t know how long it’s going to last, and we don’t know when or if a next wave is on the way. We just know that it’s costing us dearly in the meantime.”
While many on the left have pointed the blame for the crisis at Greg Abbott in Texas, a recent report in the Denver Gazette suggested that Denver’s welcoming posture, including its offer of free shelter and onward travel, has resulted in a “pull factor,” making Denver a desirable destination for migrants coming over the southern border.
Despite Denver’s recent efforts to entice migrants to leave, Johnston has continued to express support for the city’s open-arms approach to the crisis. He told the Washington Post that he believes “these newcomers can be a net benefit to the city” and that city leaders “view ourselves on the right side of history and on the right side of economic growth.”
Leaders from neighboring communities who spoke to National Review disagreed, and they pointed the blame for the ongoing crisis at President Joe Biden and at the leaders of Denver and of the state of Colorado.
“I’m not upset with Greg Abbott at all. I would probably do the same thing he’s doing,” Teal said. “I’m actually more upset with our current mayor of Denver who is starting to realize the depths of the quagmire Denver is swirling into. Yet, he won’t go far to remove the sanctuary label from the city and county of Denver. He lacks the moral courage to push back against the liberal arm of his own political party, to do the right thing.”
Geitner said she believes it is important to speak out and to make sure the migrants and the nonprofits that support them know where El Paso County stands. “I think if we had not done that, if we had not been outspoken, then we would be seeing more,” she said.
But not everyone is comfortable speaking out, particularly Democratic leaders, some of whom have privately expressed concern about the effects of the crisis on the region.
“I’ve even heard some government officials say, ‘We can’t keep talking about this or Trump might get reelected,’” Geitner said.
Even though the number of migrants arriving in Denver has slowed, Geitner said she isn’t convinced that the crisis is coming to an end.
“Until we fix our open-border problem,” she said, “I won’t feel confident that this is the end of it.”