Denver Mayor Johnston says migrant spillover is humanitarian and fiscal crisis

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston about the high numbers of migrants that have been arriving in the city. Denver has spent more than $36 million helping migrants.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Two-hundred twenty-six migrants arrived in Denver just yesterday, and that is on top of the 4,500 migrants the city’s already sheltering and the 36,000 that Denver has helped in recent months. All that is costing the city a lot. It says it has spent more than $36 million helping migrants. And Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, says his city is facing both a humanitarian and a fiscal crisis. I have him on the line now. Mayor Johnston, welcome.

MIKE JOHNSTON: Thank you so much for having me.

KELLY: I want you to paint us a picture of what’s happening in your city. I read – this was in The New York Times – that you were at a migrant encampment on Wednesday. Three hundred people were scheduled to be transferred. You were trying to get them out of the cold, and while you were standing there, more buses rolled in with more migrants from the border.

JOHNSTON: Yeah. We’ve had, you know, in the last couple months, particularly as the volumes have increased and as the folks that arrive no longer have work authorization, we’ve seen, for the first time, migrants end up in encampments outside on the street. And so we had an encampment of over 300 people. It’s actually the largest encampment we’ve ever had in Denver. And just as we successfully moved those 300 people into housing, which was a great victory, we get, at the same time, a new arrival of the next set of buses coming from Texas with a new set of newcomers who need the same set of services. So I think we are doing everything we can to be helpful and think we’re succeeding, but the volume does feel overwhelming.

KELLY: Yeah. I mean, it’s freezing in Denver right now. It’s January. For people who are not in a shelter yet, where do they go? What’s the…