By Nicole C. Brambila | SOURCE: COLORADO POLITICS
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 — El Paso Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino offered some advice to Denver Mayor Mike Johnston: Keep pushing for federal money to address the crisis brought on by surges of immigrants crossing the border.
El Paso Deputy City Manager, Mario D’Agostino, discusses how his city obtained federal funds to address the immigration surges in recent yearsPlay Video
“Don’t give up on the funding requests,” D’Agostino said. “Continuing to push for the funding.”
Unlike Denver — which has shouldered most of the $40 million cost to temporarily house, feed and transport immigrants, who illegally crossed the southern border and took buses to Colorado’s most populous city — El Paso taxpayers are not being asked to fund the humanitarian effort in west Texas.
His city spent, in the final quarter of fiscal year 2022-2023, $15 million on the effort — all of which was reimbursed by the federal government except $1.5 million, D’Agostino said.