Busloads of immigrants. It was only a matter of time. It began last week with the arrival of at least 150 people. A shelter director says most escaped the scarcity and human rights atrocities of Venezuela’s socialist government. They need our compassion, guidance and care.

Southern cities and states see big, beautiful, Denver — full of opportunity — and heed The New Colossus. They will send to Colorado their tired and poor huddled masses, including the wretched refuse, teeming their shores and yearning to breathe free.

They will send them our way despite Colorado’s landscapes of homeless camps and stressed social services.

The Gazette has discussed this eventuality with Gov. Jared Polis and other ranking and wannabe Colorado politicians. Each responded as if this were a hypothetical bridge, one we may conceivably cross in the distant future. No one offered a plan. None had given it much thought.

We predicted imminent busloads of immigrants. Colorado communities, most notably Denver, asked for it and would get what they wanted.

Denver, always on the leading edge of woke ideology, made itself a full-fledged sanctuary city for illegal immigrants in 2014. Then-Sheriff Gary Wilson; mayoral Chief of Staff Janice Sinden; Executive Director of Safety Stephanie O’Malley; City Attorney Scott Martinez; Assistant City Attorney David Broadwell; and others in power back then issued a moratorium thumbing Denver’s nose at federal immigration officials.

“Effective immediately, the Denver Sheriff’s Department (DSD) will no longer honor a request in any I-247 detainer that DSD maintain a person in custody…” the memo declared, rescinding a longstanding agreement between immigration officials and local law enforcement. “All persons who are in our custody who currently have a 48-hour ICE hold that is not accompanied by a criminal warrant or some other form that gives DSD legal authority to hold the person SHALL BE DROPPED…” (Editor’s note: emphasis theirs).

Three years later, in 2017, the Denver City Council codified Denver’s status as a sanctuary city with an ordinance that prohibits “city employees from collecting information on immigration or citizenship status; prohibits the sharing of any other information about individuals for purposes of immigration enforcement; and, memorializes predominant practices by prohibiting use of city resources or City cooperation with civil immigration enforcement…”

This and other sanctuary policies put Denver among the 10 largest sanctuary cities as ranked by the Federation for American Immigration Reform. That makes Denver a perfect place to share in the harboring of illegal immigrants.

Not long after Denver snubbed immigration law, the downside emerged. Denver authorities released criminal suspect Jose Armento-Vazquez in defiance of the suspect’s third federal immigration detainer. After his third release from a detainer, the illegal immigrant broke into the home of Magistrate David Blackett and nearly killed the judge with a knife. After the stabbing, authorities released Vazquez in defiance of a fourth immigration detainer.

If Denver had cooperated with the first, second or third retainer, Vazquez would not have been in Colorado to stab a judge. Similar examples abound.

Then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, serving today in the U.S. Senate, declared in 2016 he would resist immigrant deportation by federal authorities. When federal authorities suggested cutting off federal funds to sanctuary cities, Mayor Michael Hancock resisted and called Denver “a city of opportunity for everyone.”

Beyond question, and for better or worse, Denver has welcomed illegal immigrants — including those charged with and convicted of criminal violence.

Border states and cities along the southern border have cared for illegal immigrants for generations. Today’s record-setting immigration wave has overstressed the capacity of southern charities, religious institutions, secular charities and the social services of states, counties and municipalities.

Lacking capacity for the tragic chaos on their doorsteps, the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have taken to sharing illegal immigrants with cities and states that long ago welcomed them. Expect others to follow their lead.

Public officials do immigrants a favor by transporting them to cities that want them. Incredibly, in stunning displays of hypocrisy, nearly all advocates of sanctuary cities express exacerbation and outrage when busses arrive.

After they arrived in Denver last week, Hickenlooper said “human lives are not political props.”

They sure seemed like props when Hickenlooper and other Colorado leaders used them as abstract symbols of Colorado’s morality.

As illegal immigrants continue arriving by busloads — a safe bet — Colorado’s woke politicians had best not complain. They asked for it. They have signaled their virtue. Now they must prove it.