Since late December 2022, at least 42,269 migrants — or ‘newcomers’ as Denver leaders call them — have arrived in the city.
The more than 42,000 migrants who have arrived in Denver over the last year and a half have cost the region as much as $340 million, according to a new report that shows how the crisis has expanded beyond the city’s borders.
The report by the free-market Common Sense Institute found that the city of Denver, local school districts, and the region’s health-care system have spent between $216 million and $340 million combined to shelter, feed, clothe, and educate the migrants, and to provide them with emergency medical care. The report builds off a previous report from March that conservatively found that the migrants had cost the region at least $170 million.
DJ Summers, the institute’s research director, said the updated report makes it clear that the bill for the migrant crisis is not just being paid by the city of Denver.
“Costs are never localized,” he said. “They expand outward.”
Critics say that the city’s Democratic leaders are partly to blame for the crisis because of their welcoming posture toward immigrants generally, and their sanctuary-city policies, which curtail law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration agents.
Since late December 2022, at least 42,269 migrants — or “newcomers” as Denver leaders call them — have arrived in the city. The crisis peaked in January, but has since leveled off. Nine migrants arrived on Monday and eleven arrived on Tuesday, a city dashboard shows.
The city estimates that about half of the migrants who’ve arrived are still in the metro area.
The city has spent about $71 million on support services for the migrants, with most of that being spent on shelter and food, according to the Common Sense Institute report. City leaders expect the price tag will rise to $90 million by the end of the year.
To pay for those migrant services, the city has reduced some of its programming, frozen some open positions, and slashed budgets for city departments — including $17 million from public safety agencies.
“The city of Denver itself understands that this is a costly issue,” Summers said. “They’re not blind to that reality whatsoever.”
But the migrant costs aren’t contained to the city. The Common Sense Institute report found that the migrant crisis has also hit local emergency rooms hard.
Researchers found that since December 2022, migrants have made more than 16,000 visits to metro emergency departments. At an estimated cost of about $3,000 per visit, that has resulted in nearly $48 million in uncompensated care.
Summers said those costs are “stressing existing health care organizations,” but they also indirectly hit residents in their pocketbooks through increased insurance prices.
Metro school districts have endured the biggest financial hit — estimated between $98 million and $222 million — according to the Common Sense Institute report. The large range in costs is due to the difficulties researchers had identifying exactly how many new foreign students are tied to the migrant crisis.
The researchers found that since December 2022, 15,725 foreign students have enrolled in local schools. Of those, 6,929 have come from the five countries most closely identified with the migrant crisis — Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
On average, it costs a little over $14,000 to educate a student for a year in a Denver-area public school, but Summers said migrant students likely cost more.
“They have transportation needs that are different, they have acculturation needs that are going to be different, language assistance needs that are going to be different,” he said. “Many of them might need to get up to speed in curriculum. They might need outside tutoring.”
Earlier this year, Colorado lawmakers approved $24 million in state funding to help school districts statewide plug budget holes related to the migrant students.
Summers said the updated Common Sense Institute tally is likely still missing some costs related to the ongoing migrant crisis.
“There are definitely additional costs. We just don’t have a great way to measure them just yet,” he said, noting legal fees, crime, and unreported business and nonprofit expenses.
Despite the recent drop-off in new migrant arrivals, immigration remains a top election-year issue for voters in Colorado and around the country.
Upon assuming office in 2021, President Joe Biden almost immediately began unraveling border-control policies implemented by his predecessor, Donald Trump, leading to a surge in illegal crossings. A poll in April found that 68 percent of respondents disapproved of Biden’s handling of immigration and the border.
In early June, Biden issued an executive order directing federal immigration officials to close the southern border between officially designated ports of entry when the average number of daily crossings surpass 2,500 over a week. While conservatives generally panned the move, some Democrats said it was overly punitive.
In recent months, several cities and counties around Denver and in greater Colorado have made efforts to protect their residents from the migrant crisis — they’ve passed resolutions asserting that they are non-sanctuary communities and declaring that they won’t use public money to support migrants or to aid Denver.
In Douglas County, south of Denver, commissioners recently passed an ordinance prohibiting commercial vehicles from dropping off people unannounced in the county’s borders, and they filed a lawsuit against the state challenging state laws that limit the ability of local governments to coordinate with federal immigration officials.
In April, Denver city leaders altered their strategy for dealing with the migrant crisis, pivoting from an emergency response to a longer-term approach. The Denver Asylum Seekers Program will provide about 1,000 migrants with housing assistance for up to six months and connect them with workforce training while they wait for work authorization.
The migrants will also receive taxpayer-funded food and utility assistance, computers, prepaid cell phones, and metro bus passes, according to a Denver Gazette report in May.
Sarah Plastino, the city’s “newcomer” program director, told city councilmembers that “we designed this program to be holistic,” according to the Gazette.