By Jennifer Brown | Colorado Sun
El Paso County commissioners, voices amplified by a microphone, left no room for misinterpretation: Migrants are not welcome in Colorado Springs.
“Keep going. Find a sanctuary city,” Commissioner Carrie Geitner said two weeks ago during a hastily called news conference after a few South American migrants arrived at a church-run shelter. “They asked for those folks to come to their cities. Find one of those. That’s where they should go.”
About a week later and an hour up the highway, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston was quoting from the Statue of Liberty: “Please, send us your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” he said, even as he announced budget cuts brought on by housing and feeding migrants. “These are folks yearning to breathe free, and they believe in the promise this country made that they could breathe free.
“We as a city are bigger than this moment,” he said. “And we will find a way through.”