Denver Mayor Mike Johnston gathered with members of Colorado’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., Thursday to make an urgent plea for more federal help with the immigrant crisis in Denver and other interior cities.

“All that is required is a clear act of courage by the Congress to take action on the things cities need to be successful,” Johnston said. “And that for us means work authorizations. … It means federal resources to make sure we can support that integration. … And it means a coordinated plan for entry so that we have cities and states across the country that can all do our part … rather than one that is run haphazardly by the governor of one state deciding where folks should arrive.”

As of Thursday afternoon, 4,407 immigrants were staying in Denver city shelters, according to the city’s immigrant dashboard, with a total of 37,571 immigrants supported by the city since December 2022 at a cost more than $38 million.

But cities aren’t the only ones who need help.

Nonprofits are also in desperate need of federal resources as they shoulder much of the burden of arriving immigrants in the rest of metro Denver.

Aurora, for example, is seeing about 600 families arrive per week.

But unlike Denver, city and county governments in Aurora are not mobilizing to provide shelter and other assistance to people who are arriving. They are not advocating for federal resources like Denver is. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman has not traveled to Washington twice like Johnston has.

So nonprofits like the Village Exchange Center are stepping in.

“When Denver makes a decision to be a sanctuary city and allow everyone there, of course its going to impact the rest of the state and definitely the surrounding region and cities like Aurora that are actually right there with a very diverse population,” Amanda Blaurock, executive director of Village Exchange, told me.

Village Exchange Center is a clearinghouse for immigrants who come to Aurora, providing vaccinations, a food pantry and wraparound services.

On Wednesday, Village Exchange had 325 families lined up at their food pantry starting at 7 a.m. for the opening at noon, because they were worried that the food would run out.

Aurora does not have a Health and Human Services Department like Denver, which makes it difficult for Aurora government to take on this issue. HHS is a county department, and since Denver is both a county and a city, they have their own department coordinating the immigrant response. The HHS departments covering Aurora belong to Adams and Arapahoe counties, but they don’t have the infrastructure — or the will — to take on Aurora’s immigrants.

So in Aurora, a coalition of about 50 different nonprofits banded together as the Aurora Immigrant Response Network to assume leadership of the immigrant arrivals.

“We provide any services that we can,” said Blaurock, “but as you know that’s a really difficult thing, because, ‘OK, you need a new place to stay, where can we refer you right now?’ We help with getting them health care and provide referrals to other providers that do provide shelter, housing or any other need that they might have.”

During the extreme cold last week, Blaurock rerouted the lines of immigrants outside waiting for food and services into their basement, where pushing and shoving and fights broke out. Blaurock has had to hire security and said the flood of immigrants is taking a huge toll on her small staff.

“I think every organization is burnt out,” she said of the nonprofits in Aurora.

Why are immigrants spilling over into Aurora? It’s cheaper than Denver for one, and it’s the most diverse city in Colorado so there are many more Spanish speakers and people of the same ethnicity and culture as the immigrants. Some of the immigrants are being handed a piece of paper in Venezuela telling them they can get services at Village Exchange, Blaurock said.

“People hear and understand where services are being provided,” Blaurock said.

And Village Exchange is just blocks from the Denver border. “And who knows the border?” Blaurock asks. “Suddenly you’re on Colfax, and it becomes Aurora. That’s not something that anyone innately knows that you’re suddenly in Aurora and not Denver.”

Large American cities like Denver, Chicago and New York that get more national attention are getting the bulk of federal aid, not mid-size cities like Aurora.

FEMA has already distributed two rounds of money to Colorado and Denver, but none of that money went directly to nonprofits. In fact, nonprofits in Aurora have been barred from directly receiving any of the $363 million allocated across the country in 2023. FEMA officials told Blaurock she needed to ask the congressional delegation to request funds specifically for nonprofits.

In October, she and other nonprofit leaders, as well as seven Democratic state lawmakers and a handful of Aurora school board members sent a letter to Colorado’s U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, who represents Aurora, asking for their help.

In December, Colorado’s delegation did send a request to FEMA for city money, and the letter did include a request to provide money directly from FEMA to nonprofits.

Blaurock hasn’t heard back yet.

The delegation’s letter did not acknowledge that Congress itself, rather than FEMA, could allocate more money for cities and nonprofits struggling with immigrants, but an agreement on dealing with the border crisis is bogged down.

Will Congress help Denver and Aurora? I don’t see a lot of motivation for Republicans to solve this immigration crisis right now and help Democratic cities like Denver. The border crisis is too good of a campaign issue to actually fix things at the moment. Donald Trump essentially said so on Thursday.

“I do not think we should do a border deal at all, unless we get EVERTHING needed to shut down the invasion of Millions and Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country,” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday.

“Republicans have been told you cannot work on this issue, because we’re going to win on it in November,” Colorado U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen said at the Johnston press conference Thursday. “This should not be a partisan tactic on winning elections. This is something we have to come together on in a bipartisan way.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, who was also at the presser, said, “The citizens of Denver are stepping up, but they are not in charge of the immigration policy of the United States.

“We need to step up. There is a reason the Constitution assigns this responsibility for immigration not to …competing states or not to people with competing political agendas in the states but to the United States of America.

“We cannot fail on this.”

Meanwhile, as Washington fiddles, Blaurock and other nonprofit leaders are holding their breath.