Colorado’s Republican members of Congress repeatedly spread false information about crime rates in Denver and Aurora as they lined up to question Denver Mayor Mike Johnston during a lengthy hearing Wednesday on so-called “sanctuary city” policies on Capitol Hill.
Johnston, a Vail native, was one of four big-city mayors called to testify by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation of what U.S. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican and the committee’s chair, called “misguided and obstructionist policies” that hinder enforcement of federal immigration laws.
In a prepared statement, Johnston recounted the actions Denver took in response to the arrival of large numbers of migrants, many of them Venezuelans lawfully seeking asylum, in the city beginning in early 2023. More than 42,000 people arrived in the city over the next 18 months, in what is believed to be the largest per-capita influx of migrants of any city in the country.
“We are each entitled to our own opinion about what should happen at the border, but that was not the question facing Denver,” Johnston told lawmakers. “The question Denver faced was: What will you do with a mom and two kids dropped on the streets of our city with no warm clothes, no food and no place to stay?”
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