The Gazette editorial board | Denver Gazette
Say what you will about the Trump administration, but give it credit for sparing U.S. taxpayers from bailing out cities whose sanctuary policies made them magnets for illegal immigration.
The fact that Denver is among those cities isn’t Washington’s fault. It’s Mayor Mike Johnston’s.
And the fact that Denver now likely won’t be reimbursed some or all of $32 million it had forced local taxpayers to pony up in welcoming the latest wave of illegal immigrants, as reported by The Gazette, is Johnston’s comeuppance. It’s also Denver taxpayers’ loss.
The Mile High mayor who showboated before a congressional panel in Washington last March — and sanctimoniously pronounced, “… Denver made a choice as a city not to hate each other but to help each other…” — now must eat his words. It’s a told-ya-so moment after he had threatened to meet any immigration agents at Denver’s city limits with “50,000 Highland moms” in resistance, and had said he wasn’t afraid to go to jail.
Granted, Johnston was lulled by four years of rudderless immigration policy and U.S. border chaos under the previous presidency. So, he may have sincerely believed the feds would fork over the cash to backfill the cost of feeding, sheltering and medically treating tens of thousands of “newcomers.”
He evidently failed to consider that a new administration elected on promises to regain control of our borders and crack down on illegal immigration — might do just that. It looks like his grandstanding and defiant rhetoric have caught up with him.
So he must have felt like a trust-funder finally being cut off by over-indulgent parents when he got the bad news recently in a letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.