Editor’s note: Welcome to Border Crossroads, a series of dispatches from America’s southern border, where reporter Nico Brambila and multimedia producer Tom Hellauer are chronicling the crisis that is spilling over into Denver and other interior cities.    

EL PASO, TEXAS — While Denver authorities have speculated about the reasons for the influx of immigrants — which include blaming Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — officials at the U.S. border point to something entirely different: free, onward transportation.

For months, the prevailing theory in Denver was its proximity to El Paso Texas; its pivotal transportation hub and its status as a “sanctuary city.”

Each has undoubtedly contributed to the nearly 40,000 new immigrant arrivals. But in the early days of the surge at the U.S. border with Mexico, very few were going to Denver.

Immigrants chose the typical gateway cities during previous waves: Chicago and New York City.

And then 14 months ago, nearly 100 immigrants were dropped off at Union Station in downtown Denver.

“It wasn’t until after your December surge that we started to see Denver as a destination,” said Irene Gutiérrez, executive director of El Paso County Community Services in west Texas.

Answering the question why immigrants — who crossed the southern border illegally — started coming to Denver in droves could be instructive as officials grapple with potentially a $180 million budget shortfall this year and strategize to make the pivot away from an emergency response to a long-term strategy.

Although well intended, Gutiérrez doubts Denver would be facing the humanitarian crisis it is in without the promise of free shelter and onward travel.

“There’s a pull factor created by this, and the policies in Denver for paying for onward destinations,” Gutiérrez said.

City leaders The Denver Gazette spoke to remained less than convinced. Several councilmembers and Mayor Mike Johnston doubled down on the necessity to provide onward travel.

“We don’t have the option of not doing onward travel,” said Councilman Darrell Watson.

Watson added: “If we did not do onward travel, we would be in a deeper predicament than we are in right now.”

Jordan Fuja, a Johnston spokesperson, agreed.

“The influx of newcomers to Denver is not due to any free transportation the City and County of Denver may be providing, especially as the majority of the tickets we purchase are for people who were sent to Denver under the Texas transportation program in the first place,” Fuja said in an email to The Denver Gazette.

‘An unspoken rule’

Early in the crisis here, Denver officials decided that the city would provide food and shelter to the immigrants, as well as onward travel to their final destination.

Since then, the city has purchased plane, train and bus tickets for roughly half of the immigrants, suggesting half may have stayed in Denver.

Very few of the immigrants who cross the Rio Grande will stay in El Paso out of fear of deportation or unfriendly immigration court judges. So, although the vast majority intend to leave this border community of about 677,000, El Paso does not provide onward travel outside of Abbott’s charter buses.

“Everyone adopted an unspoken rule that we’re not going to pay for travel because it creates a pull factor,” Gutierrez said.

The reason can be found in a story she tells about a small El Paso shelter that received a modest donation last summer, which paid the onward travel for about 50 immigrants.

Those 50 tickets — Gutiérrez said — drew 10,000 more immigrants.

DJ Summers, director of policy and research for the Common Sense Institute, said that from an economic perspective, the destination choices of immigrants make sense.

“They basically have every reason to come to Denver,” Summers said.

Founded in 2010, the institute is a nonprofit organization in Greenwood Village that conducts fiscal and economic research.

With fewer than half of arriving immigrants having been bussed by Abbott, Summers said this doesn’t suggest “they’re being used as a political pawn.”

“Everyone wants to lay this directly at Greg Abbott’s feet,” Summers said. “Word of mouth more so than Gov. Abbot contributed to Denver becoming a locus for migrants.”

‘A manufactured destination’

After 90 immigrants were left to wander in the cold a year ago, public conjecture initially pointed to a political stunt.

Earlier that year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had nabbed international headlines and scored political points among conservatives for sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an upscale island enclave known for its celebrities and high society.

Both DeSantis and Abbott have harnessed the discontent with President Joe Biden’s handling of the border crisis by transporting immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities in Democratic strongholds.

Generally speaking, a sanctuary city is a designation given to municipalities and counties that establish policies to discourage local law enforcement from reporting an individual’s immigration status to federal authorities.

Gutiérrez — like Johnston and others — fault Abbott.

“It’s a manufactured destination and it was our governor who did that,” Gutierrez said.

The number of immigrants coming to Denver, though, do not fully support blaming Abbott.

While the Republican governor has relished busing immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities, Denver wasn’t one of them initially.

Abbott didn’t begin busing immigrants to Colorado — according to the governor’s office — until May 18, 2023.

That’s roughly six months after Denver began experiencing immigrant surges.

“Texas’ overwhelmed and overrun border communities should not have to shoulder the flood of illegal immigration due to President Biden’s reckless open border policies, like his mass catch and release without court dates or any way to track them,” Abbott said, when announcing he had added Denver to his busing list of cities.

“Until the President and his Administration step up and fulfill their constitutional duty to secure the border, the State of Texas will continue busing migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities like Denver to provide much-needed relief to our small border towns,” he added.

Since implementing his busing program in April 2022, Abbott has transported more than 103,000 immigrants out of Texas to six major cities, which, in addition to Denver, include Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City Philadelphia and Washington DC.

The day before Abbott’s first bus arrived in Denver last spring, the city had already received 10,058 immigrants, city data shows.

Since then, Abbott has bused more than 16,300 immigrants to Denver. This represents roughly four out of every 10 immigrants who arrived in the city.

As of Friday morning, Denver has welcomed 38,762 immigrants who are mostly from South and Central America.

That means more than 22,000 of the immigrants were not plopped on a bus chartered by Abbott.

“You trust a governor that I don’t trust,” Council President Pro-Tem Amanda Sandoval said of Abbott. “I’m not going to believe Governor Abbott on any data that he puts out.”

‘No end game in sight’

Of the more than $51 million spent on the humanitarian response, at least $14.3 million was paid to shelter immigrants, according to the city.

In comparison, roughly $6.4 million has been spent on transportation.

Denver’s greatest expense, though, continues to be related to staffing, said Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for Denver Human Services, which has managed the response since the city lifted its emergency declarations last year.

Taxpayers are shouldering the bulk of the costs and city officials contend the spending is not sustainable.

Johnston, who declined to be interviewed, has called on city department heads to find at least 10% in cuts. The city is scaling back DMV and parks and recreation services to cut $5 million in costs, with more belt tightening expected.

Changes to the city’s immigrant response is entering a new a phase, Johnston has said.

Those changes — Johnston said last week — are expected to include reducing the number of immigrants served by the city.

While Johnston provided no additional details, he insisted the city would not be “shutting the door” on new arrivals.

It is unclear, though, how city officials will accomplish reducing the number served without also reducing the incentives for those coming, such as free onward transportation and shelter.

Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore said the city will have to get better at moving immigrants along to their final destination.

“We can’t continue sheltering people with no end game in sight,” Gilmore said. “Onward travel is really what we’re going to have to ask people to consider.”

Gilmore added: “We’ve got to call in all our cards at this point. Denver’s heart is much bigger than our bank account.”

‘We just don’t want that crisis here’

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in Denver doesn’t always stay in Denver.

A rumor of available work in Carbondale, Colorado late last year prompted more than 150 mostly Venezuela immigrants in Denver to relocate to the remote mountain community, overwhelming officials.

And the spillover into Aurora has compelled councilmembers to pass a resolution demanding that nonprofits and other local governments alike not transport immigrants into their city without first obtaining an agreement over costs and services.

The resolution also affirms Aurora’s “non-sanctuary” status, asserting that the city “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.”

Down the road in Colorado Springs, the city council recently approved a largely symbolic resolution that also reaffirms it is not a sanctuary city in the hopes of discouraging immigrants from heading south.

Colorado Springs City Council President Randy Helms, supported the measure. And he believes — as officials at the southern border do — that being “welcoming” has welcomed the immigrant influx.

“When you offer someone free transportation, free shelter, I think it’s only human nature people would be drawn to that,” Helms said.

Helms added: “Denver is going through a struggle and are going through a crisis. We just don’t want that crisis here.”

El Paso County Commissioner Carrie Geitner agreed.

“I don’t think people want to recognize that their policy decisions created the situation that they’re in,” Geitner said.

This will make it difficult, Geitner and others said, for Denver to change course.

“There are a lot of downstream impact that we experience on a variety of issues and this is one of them,” Geitner said. “We’re not going to roll out the red carpet. We’re not going to create a magnet.”