Denver plans to close four migrant shelters over the next month, potentially saving up to $60 million this year and reducing the need for budget cuts, Mayor Mike Johnston said Wednesday.
The closures will leave three hotel shelters open for migrants, along with a couple congregate shelter spaces. But Johnston warned the closure plan could change if the city sees massive surges of arrivals and again has to increase its shelter space and migrant services.
He also took issue with claims this week by Aurora City Council members that migrants were being bused into their city.
In Denver, city departments have started making budget cuts at Johnston’s direction to offset the costs of migrant services. On Feb. 9, the mayor announced reduced hours at recreation centers and rolling closures of Denver Motor Vehicle offices as part of $5 million in reductions.
Earlier this year, Johnston estimated that the city might have to cut up to $180 million from its 2024 budget — though that was a worst-case scenario estimate based on high numbers from the most recent surge continuing, his office has acknowledged. The hotel shelter closures could reduce the migrant budget impact to $120 million, the city says.
“We knew that as a result of federal inaction on immigration and the resulting budget crisis, there were two important steps we needed to take,” Johnston said at a news conference. “One was to adjust city budgets to support those needs. And the second was to reduce the overall cost of our migrant program.”
Denver has provided services for nearly 39,000 migrants since the first buses from Texas border cities began arriving in December 2022. A majority of the migrants are seeking asylum from Central and South America, and Venezuela in particular, as humanitarian and political conditions have deteriorated there.
The city earlier reinstated length-of-stay limits in shelters, and 2,500 have left in the last six weeks, Johnston said, cutting the shelter population almost by half. About 2,300 were in shelters Wednesday, according to a city dashboard.
Since the end of January, the city has provided case management services to more than 700 migrants, including helping about 500 people get into temporary housing — nearly half of them children, City Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval said at the news conference.
Denver is receiving the majority of migrant arrivals among metro cities and has asked other communities to help with services and sheltering. The Aurora City Council on Monday night passed a resolution rejecting that premise and demanding that migrants no longer be bused into Aurora.
Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky asserted that migrants were being dropped off without knowing where they were, or sometimes against their will, including in the middle of the night.
But Johnston called Jurinsky’s claim false. Nonprofit groups that are part of Aurora’s Migrant Response Network say they have not seen or heard of that occurring, either.
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More often than not, migrants who end up in Aurora have walked there from other places, showing up at the Dayton Day Labor Center looking for work, said Mateos Alvarez, the executive director of the Aurora Economic Opportunity Coalition.
Denver rented rooms in one Aurora hotel for migrants at the end of last year, but according to city officials, only 10 people remain and that site is also closing.
“History is pretty clear on this,” Johnston said of the Aurora resolution. “There’s a long history of cities in this country — over centuries — who bet on being anti-immigrant in their economic strategies, and look and see how those cities have done.”
Denver, he added, “will be the most vibrant city in the state for decades to come” because it’s a welcoming place for people who will make it better.
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