Is Denver bearing the brunt of the unprecedented illegal border crossings from South and Central America to the United States, prompted in part, by Venezuelans fleeing an authoritarian regime?

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston thinks so.

“Right now, Denver is the single largest recipient of migrants, per capita, of any city in America,” Johnson said Wednesday at an encampment that had housed roughly 300 homeless immigrants off Speer Boulevard and Zuni Street.

“We have two and half times more migrants than New York City, per capita.”

It’s a talking point the mayor has repeated on a press junket in recent days to urge Congress and the White House to do more.

But is he correct?

The short answer is that it’s difficult to say with any real certainty because the data on these new arrivals is, at best, incomplete. Only Denver and Chicago have public dashboards showing the number of new arrivals.

The mayor’s office did share with The Denver Gazette the tallies of the six major cities — including Denver — that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has shipped immigrants to: Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

Representatives for these cities could not be reached for comment on Friday.

It appears, then, that Johnson is referring to cities outside of the border states and based on data from Abbot’s office. 

While New York City has received the lion share of overall immigrants— more than 160,000, as reported by The Hill — that represents just 2% of the 8.3 million people who call the Big Apple home.

As of Friday, Denver had welcomed more than 36,500 immigrants from South and Central America since a bus dropped off 90 immigrants downtown a year ago, igniting a frantic scramble to respond to the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the border with Mexico. 

The 36,000-plus immigrants Denver has received represents 5% of the more than 700,000 people who live in Colorado’s most populous city, which would indeed make it the city taking in the most immigrants per capita, which means the average per person in the host city.

No other municipality — according to the mayor’s office — has received more immigrants, in sheer number, than Denver and New York City.

The city of Chicago reports it has received 33,909 immigrants, the bulk of them from Texas. For a city of roughly 2.6 million, that represents just 1.3% of those who live in Chicago.

Washington D.C. — with a population of about 671,800 people — has received the third-highest number of immigrants, the mayor’s tally shows, citing Abbott’s office as part of the Republican governor’s Operation Lone Star.

If accurate, the 12,500 new immigrant arrivals would represent 1.8% of those living in the nation’s capital.

Despite their status as gateway cities for immigrants, the mayor’s count for Los Angeles and Philadelphia are shockingly low: 1,300 and 3,400, respectively.

The 1,300 immigrant arrivals in Los Angeles represents just 0.3% of the 3.8 million Angelenos living in the City of Angels.

In Philly, these new immigrants represent just 0.2% of the 1.5 million people living in the City of Brotherly Love.

These same numbers were also reported by Abbott, who has touted his effort to address illegal immigration by transporting immigrants to cities run by Democrats.

As of Dec. 29, Abbott has bused more than 13,800 to Denver alone, more than Los Angeles and Philadelphia combined.

The reason could be as simple as the fact a one-way bus ticket from El Paso, Texas, to Denver is just $90.

Democratic and Republican governors — as well as between Democratic leaders — have exchanged barbs, each blaming the other for a surge that leaders have claimed will break local budgets.

On “Meet the Press” earlier this week, Johnston repeated the three things the city needs most from Congress and the White House to address to the unfolding humanitarian crisis — once confined to border states — that has engulfed Denver: a coordinated entry plan, federal funding and work authorization.

“If every one of these individuals arrived in Denver with work authorization the day they got here, we’d need almost no federal support,” Johnston said Wednesday during the sweep of the Zuni Street encampment.

Without naming Abbott, Johnston said a coordinated entry plan for these immigrants would alleviate the stress city officials feel with “the governor of one state deciding where all newcomers go.”

The shuffling of immigrants from one community to another has been a point of contention throughout the surge with the mayors of New York City and Chicago having blasted Gov. Jared Polis last year for busing immigrants there.

Renae Eze, an Abbott spokesperson, has also criticized Johnston.

“Instead of attacking Texas’ efforts to provide relief to our overwhelmed border communities, these Democrat mayors should call on their party leader to finally do his job and secure the border — something he continues refusing to do,” Eze has said.

Early in the surge city leaders decided Denver taxpayers would shoulder the cost to temporarily feed, shelter and transport these new arrivals. The expense has been a staggering $36 million and counting.

While the city has received roughly $14.1 million in state and federal funding, Denver taxpayers have assumed the brunt of the costs.