Dem Denver Mayor on Migrant Crisis: ‘Every Hotel Room We Have in the City of Denver Is Full’

Jones: “I’ve been back and forth to Denver and your folks are very compassionate, nice people always very welcoming. But I — I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed them so outrageous right now. And I don’t think it has anything to do with being anti-migrant, they just feel like the priorities where the migrants are being prioritized over them. I was looking at the numbers with the health care system, you got 8,000 migrants that are using the ER emergency services. And they visited 20,000 times, and residents are saying they’re being turned away.”
JOHNSTON: “And we have both, a humanitarian crisis here and now we have a fiscal crisis, which is we are a welcoming city and also we don’t want to cut corps city services. But right now we’re in this dilemma where we can’t get any help from the federal government on work authorization, or on controlling entry, or on the ability to actually provide resources to cities.”
Jones: “So February 5th is the day and unless you know you and council extends it, where it looks like you guys are going to cut off, there’s going to be a cap of the migrants that are going to be able to use the facilities. What’s going to happen then when — JOHNSTON: “Yeah.”
Jones: “— when they’re not able to be sheltered, they’re going to be on the street, I’m assuming, and are you concerned about that?”
JOHNSTON: “So, we’ve always had a length of stay policy here, which was generally individual adults can stay for 14 days, and families can stay for 37 days. We paused that for about four to six weeks during very, very cold times in November and December. Every hotel room we have in the city of Denver is full. We have 5,000 people in shelter, and we have more coming every day. And so we have to reactivate the policy we’ve always had, which is you can come and stay for a length of time, but it can’t be forever.”