As officials in Denver continue rolling evictions of illegal aliens from city-supported migrant shelters due to a lack of funding, many have ended up in illegal tent encampments. But hundreds more have been placed in the homes of private citizens who volunteered to take migrants in, for a stipend.
With more than 40,000 of President Joe Biden’s illegal border crossers flooding into Denver in the last year, city officials have struggled to come up with the funding to arrange housing for them all. In February, officials began warning migrants that the money was gone and many will be evicted from shelters if they stay past the 42-day mark.
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Many of these illegals say the chief problem is they are not legally allowed to work without a federally supplied work permit and without a job they cannot pay their own way. The lack of jobs and shelter evictions has left hundreds to set up illegal tent encampments on public lands. But even that, as NPR recently reported, has its limits as police departments occasionally sweep them away from their camping spots.
In fact, some illegals have been bold enough to raise a tent encampment as a protest over the city’s faltering shelter program.
This week, one such protest encampment was fronted by a pro-Palestinian activist named V. Reeves who claims “they/them” pronouns and said they want to highlight that there is “a lot of dissonance between what is coming out of the city, and what the mayor is saying and what the reality of what these people’s lives are.”
She added that there is “so many incredibly strong parallels” between the illegals in the U.S. and “the fight for a free Palestine” because “we are facing a common enemy” in the “colonial structure that decides that black and brown bodies are not of the same value as white European colonial settler bodies are.”
V. Reeves has also delivered a list of demands to Denver officials for free food, clothes, and other items for the migrants at the protest camp.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and his administration also pushed an alternate idea to solve the housing problem by urging private citizens to take migrants into their own homes.
Pursuant to that, a left-wing group calling itself Hope Has No Borders has begun working to convince homeowners to take in migrant families and they say that about 500 illegals have found a spot in private homes so far, according to KDVR-TV.
The activist group has worked with city officials to sponsor a special hotline for homeowners who want to join the program.
Homeowners can dial 211 on their phones to be immediately connected with representatives of Hope Has No Borders. They will be asked a series of questions and if the organization finds them suitable, they will be sent a group of migrants to house.
Denver homeowner Erin Lennon told the station that she felt she needed to step up.
“Why aren’t you doing something? You know?” she claimed she said to herself. “Just in my heart, that’s what I was telling myself.”
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Hope Has No Borders executive director Jenifer Kettering marveled at the number of Denverites who have volunteered, saying, “It’s pretty significant, the number of people who are open to this idea.”
The group reportedly gives homeowners a stipend to help pay for utilities and other expenses, but just how much that stipend might be has not been reported.
To those worried about taking in strangers who are already breaking U.S. laws, Kettering added, “Some of the greatest things that, you know, that you do or have done, has been involved with some risk.”
But the possibility of risk to homeowners does seem real. Hope Has No Borders has not revealed how or even if they vet the illegals they are placing in people’s homes. And with the federal government often having no records at all on illegals flooding into the country, the group may simply be relying on what the illegals tell them, whether it is true or not.
Conversely, some communities surrounding Denver have taken the opposite track and have begun floating city rules that prevent illegals from even coming into their jurisdictions.
The city council of the small town of Monument, for instance, recently voted unanimously to formally confirm its non-sanctuary status.
“The goal is to make sure that Denver knows that we will not be accepting any busloads of migrants into our community,” said Mayor Mitch LaKind. “The main reason is that we don’t have a budget that matches theirs, and we won’t utilize taxpayer funds for the support of what they’ve decided to take on themselves as a self-declared sanctuary city.”
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