Denver officials recently traveled to the Mexico border to tell shelter providers in El Paso, Texas that the city will no longer have an open arms policy toward immigrants who arrive in Colorado’s most populous jurisdiction, which is considering major cuts to its public safety budget and other places in an effort to contain the fiscal toll of the crisis.  

Immigrants will only be permitted to stay in taxpayer-funded shelters for up to 72 hours, Jon Ewing, Denver Human Services spokesperson, said.

“We didn’t want anyone mislead or surprised,” Ewing said of the policy change.

Denver Human Services has managed the response since the city lifted its emergency declarations last year.

Previously, the arriving immigrant families — many from South and Central America who illegally crossed the southern border — were permitted to stay in city-provided shelter for up to 42 days. Individuals could stay for up to two weeks.

That all changed as of April 11, Ewing said.

Several months back, city leaders hatched a new, long-term strategy that involves imploring the immigrants to leave Denver at taxpayers’ expense.

It remains to be seen if Denver’s new discouragement policy is paying off. The number of overnight arrivals has been plummeting since January.

“I think it’s going to take a little while for the message to get through to people,” Ewing said.

Ewing added, “A lot of people are taking us up on onward travel. We’re not seeing a large number of people in the congregate sites.”

Since March, the city has closed at seven shelters designated for immigrants.

The issue of illegal immigration and Denver’s response have catapulted the city — and mayor Mike Johnston — into the national spotlight.

Over the past 16 months, Denver has welcomed more than 41,000 immigrants at a cost of roughly $68 million.

Early in the crisis, Denver officials decided the city would provide shelter to new arrivals as well as pay for onward travel to an immigrant’s final destination.

Although the state and federal government have reimbursed Denver about $14.5 million, city taxpayers have assumed the bulk of these costs.

In January when the city was seeing several hundred overnight arrivals and providing sheltering to about 5,000 immigrants, Johnston warned that the costs this year alone could hit up to $180 million and told city agencies to up to 15% in budget cuts. 

Scaling back motor vehicle and parks and recreation services has already shaved $5 million of those expected costs. But it hasn’t been enough.

DJ Summers, director of policy and research for the Common Sense Institute, said slashing the number of shelter days indicates that the city does not have the resources to maintain its previous level of support.

“This is not simply impacting whether or not there are going to be flowers in Wash park,” Summers said.

Founded in 2010, the institute is a nonprofit organization in Greenwood Village that conducts fiscal and economic research.

Johnson has also proposed roughly $40 million in cuts — primarily to public safety — to various departments. The average cut by department was 4%, city data shows.

“I think it’s a clear indication that the city does not have the resources it once did,” Summers said. “This is a very clear sign that we just can’t do it anymore, not to the level that we did before.”

But public safety — which includes fire, police and the sheriff’s office — accounted for nearly half the cuts, or $16.9 million.

“This is starting to have the consequences we were afraid of,” Summers said.

The Denver City Council is expected to vote on Johnston’s proposed budget cuts by the end of the month.

Johnston’s immigration response plan anticipates spending $90 million this year.

A statewide poll earlier this month showed illegal immigration to be the paramount issue for Colorado voters. Roughly two in three view the unprecedented influx as a major problem lawmakers should address. Homelessness, which has been a longstanding issue in Denver, hit the No. 2 spot.

Denver voters blamed the Biden administration, Denver’s immigrant policies and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing campaign to so-called “sanctuary cities” in Democratic strongholds. Starting in the spring of 2022, Abbott has bused more than 105,000 immigrants — including more than 16,600 to Denver — out of Texas to six cities.

Officials in El Paso, Texas, however, have pointed the finger at free shelter and tickets for onward travel in Denver as a major draw for the immigrants.

Hotels and lodging for immigrants has accounted for the lion share of the spending roughly 36%, according to Ewing.

Irene Gutiérrez, executive director of El Paso County Community Services in west Texas, has said that shelters on the border have adopted an unspoken rule not to pay for travel “because it creates a pull factor.”

Among officials and others in Denver, the prevailing theory explaining the surge in immigrants had been the city’s proximity to El Paso Texas, its pivotal transportation hub and its status as a “sanctuary city.”

Broadly speaking, a sanctuary city refers to municipalities and counties policies that discourage local law enforcement from reporting an individual’s immigration status to federal authorities.