Denver's Democratic mayor pleads for help to handle migrant crisis as city comes 'close to its breaking point'

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said his city is "close to its breaking point" as he pleaded for federal aid to help mitigate the migrant crisis that has overwhelmed the Mile High City, among others across the nation.

"I think our city is very close to its breaking point now, and we've been talking to leaders in D.C. around the country about why we need to take action here," Johnston told Lawrence Jones in an exclusive "Fox & Friends" interview Wednesday.  

"I think we have successfully welcomed almost 40,000 migrants in the last year, and we know what it takes to do this successfully. We just need that help, and the things we need are federal dollars, but the most important thing is we need work authorization for folks when they arrive. We need those resources at the border, so you can add more security at the border, so you can help process those asylum claims and so the folks that do arrive here can work."

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Former State Sen. Mike Johnston in a mayoral runoff debate hosted at Regis University in Denver, Colorado on Thursday, May 11, 2023.  (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

One of the challenges migrants in his city face, he said, is the distance between their arrival date and their court date for their asylum case. He told Jones that the distance renders migrants unable to work and support themselves, forcing the state and local governments to support them instead.

Meanwhile, the city is left to deal with not only a humanitarian crisis, but also a fiscal crisis of epic proportion.  

"We are a welcoming city, and we also don't want to cut core 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," Johnston said.

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City residents echo the concerns.

Priscilla Rahn, a teacher at a local public middle school, told Jones the institution is already 100 students over projection, and 70 arrived just Monday.

"You can imagine the crisis across the entire district," she said. 

"We don't have the funds to make sure that we have resources for all of our students. So teachers are scrambling. We have CMAS [Colorado Measures of Academic Success] testing coming up in March, and we don't have enough computers. This is a state mandate, so we're really desperate right now."

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Migrants try to reach the United States border to seek humanitarian asylum in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on January 17, 2024. Cities across the U.S. continue to point out the challenges they face due to the uncontrolled influx of migrants. (Christian Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Vanessa Rutledge, another Denver resident, said she is also outraged by the crisis and is eager for change.

"We're waiting for Mayor Johnston, as well as [Gov.] Jared Polis, to demand something needs to be done," she said. "We want to hear them say, ‘President Biden, stop this now.’"

Both residents highlighted public safety concerns as well, bringing up reports of stabbings and other reports made just yards away from the middle school where Priscilla teaches. They called for officials to address the crisis at the southern border, and criticized those who say objecting to sanctuary cities lack compassion.

"That's almost like they're weaponizing our compassion and our good nature against us," Rahn said.

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"This is not a who cares or loves the most situation. This is a resource allocation situation as well as public safety. Michael Johnston, mayor here in Denver, already came out and said that he's going to cut all city-wide departments by 10%. We're down over 400 police officers in the Denver Police Department. What does that look like after a 10% budget cut? What does that do to 911 response times? How is our city going to look when this is all said and done?"

Both residents said they hope the crisis will lead to change, with Rahn emphasizing Biden should return to the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy while Rutledge said she doubts the crisis will impact Denver residents' votes.

"But I hope people wake up and see that they can do something," she said. "And that usually happens that November with the ballot."