Denver is evicting roughly 800 illegal immigrant families from the sanctuary city’s shelters as over 40,000 illegal immigrants have been relocated to the capital of Colorado over the past several months.
Newsweek reported that approximately 140 illegal immigrant families were removed from city shelters on Monday. City officials explained that another 660 illegal immigrant families will be evicted within the next few weeks. Denver’s removal of illegal immigrant families from the city shelters is expected to impact over 3,000 total individuals.
According to Fox News, Denver has struggled to find the resources needed to support the unprecedented number of illegal immigrants being relocated to the sanctuary city, especially as Texas has continued to highlight the southern border crisis by sending thousands of illegal immigrants to Denver and other cities across the country.
Mayor Mike Johnson estimated that roughly 4,000 or 5,000 illegal immigrants will continue to be housed in city shelters despite the city now limiting families to a shelter for six weeks, 9 News reported. The outlet reported that 3,857 illegal immigrants were in the city’s illegal immigrant shelter system as of Sunday night.
“We have filled every single hotel room that we have available in the city and county of Denver,” Johnston said during a recent town hall meeting. “Now we have the terrible decision that if we don’t start exiting folks, we will have 250 folks that will arrive today or the day after who don’t have anywhere to go at night.”
READ MORE: Viral Video: Gang of illegal immigrants drags woman down NYC street
Last week, Johnston told Fox News that Denver was “very close” to reaching a breaking point due to the city’s illegal immigrant crisis. While the city paused the eviction of illegal immigrant families from city shelters in November, a representative from the mayor’s office noted that the city is now at “straining capacity” due to a “dramatic uptick” in illegal immigrant arrivals.
“Our city workers have done heroic work helping newcomers land on their feet and start to build a life in Denver, but we are out of shelter space,” Johnston’s press secretary, Jordan Fuja, told Newsweek. “We are out of staff. And we are facing a budget deficit of up to $180 million to cover sheltering costs.”
Fuja warned that if the federal government does not provide “commonsense support” for cities struggling with an influx of illegal immigrants, Denver and other cities across the country will be forced to make “significant budget cuts,” which will result in cities “scaling back sheltering services” for illegal immigrants.
