COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Throngs of people were crossing the southwestern border. Denver was straining to support the thousands who had made their way it. But 70 miles south, the migrant crisis had hardly touched Colorado’s second largest city — and local officials did n’t want that to change.
” This is a problem of sanctuary cities who thought it would be fun to virtue signal. And now they’re reaping the rewards”, Carrie Geitner, a commissioner for the county surrounding Colorado Springs, said in February. Her message for migrants:” Keep going. Do not stop here in El Paso County”.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said the “noise” in nearby jurisdictions meant his city has mostly gone it alone, though some have helped in low- profile ways. He said he views the resolutions as shortsighted.
Colorado Springs is different both politically and demographically. At the foot of the famed Pikes Peak, the city is known as home to the U. S. Air Force Academy and an epicenter of evangelical Christianity. About two- thirds of its 484, 000 residents are White, and around 18 percent are Latino. A Washington Post analysis of federal data shows that some 2, 200 Latin American migrants — adults and children involved in immigration court proceedings — have settled here at some point since 2021.
Serving as mayor seemed a natural extension of those elements of his life, and his 15- point victory over a former GOP secretary of state made him the city’s first elected Black mayor and the first non- Republican since Colorado Springs began electing mayors in 1979.
” I was taught as a kid: You do n’t marry outside your tribe. You do n’t think like the other tribes. What does that sound like? Politics”, Mobolade, 45, said in an interview at his sixth- floor office overlooking downtown. ” I think America as a whole has a distrust with the establishment. … There’s a tiredness of it”.
The migrant crisis landed on his desk in the form of a voice mail from a contact at the Salvation Army shelter, who told him the facility was housing 21 Venezuelan families who had traveled by bus from Denver, squeezing its ability to help locals. Mobolade said he shared the information with county commissioners. They quickly assembled a news conference — with little notice to the mayor — where Geitner decried a crisis “destroying cities and communities around our nation”.
A right- leaning advocacy group, Springs Taxpayers United, obtained the voice mail through a public records request and posted it on its website.
” It became a political tool”, Mobolade said. Residents promptly flooded him with complaints.
The mayor took to Facebook Live to deliver a message he hoped would tread a middle ground. There was no crisis, he said, nor did he want one. He would be a” careful steward of our taxpayer dollars”. As an immigrant who came through a” traditional” pathway, he understood migrants ‘ quest for opportunity, but the federal government needed to “ensure they’re taken care of”.
Colorado Springs, he stressed, would not become a sanctuary city.
” What I do n’t support for my city is any kind of hate or politicizing real people”, he said.
Council member Nancy Henjum saw the effort as a step back for a city that launched a successful 1992 state ballot measure — later overturned in federal court — to prohibit local gay rights laws.
” It feels like we have finally emerged from the legacy of being known as the’ hate state,'” Henjum said in an interview. ” We’ve come so far, and I believe we want to be a welcoming city”.
” It’s willing blindness”, said Donelson, who has faulted the mayor’s emergency plan to handle a possible migrant influx as frustratingly vague. He repeatedly asked city staff how many migrants are in town and was told that they have no business demanding numbers from nonprofits that might be aiding new arrivals. ” You can say you’re not a sanctuary city, but if your actions are to say we need to help people who are coming here for a better way of life, and we will not tell nonprofits or suggest to them what to do, that leaves me concerned”.
At a media briefing a week after the resolution passed, Mobolade shared Catholic Charities ‘ estimate that “asylum seekers” made up just 1 percent of those served at its local shelter.
” The rumors are there because of false fear that has been stirred up in our community”, he said, with the city wasting money chasing reports of migrant arrivals.
These days, demand is not great: The coalition is helping only about a half- dozen migrant families, and King, who testified against the resolution, said she’s not sure why the city would not want to help them assimilate.
” People need to think long- term”, she said. ” Do we want a whole bunch of people living in our city that do not have jobs”?
” They generalize us. All Venezuelans are n’t bad”, she said. ” Some of us came to work and make money to send home. Others came to make a new life here. Others come to do wrong… unfortunately, we all pay for that”.
The migrant issue has calmed of late, and so have the irate — and occasionally expletive- strewn — messages that Mobolade was getting. Even with his efforts to carefully navigate the issue, he said he faced more prejudice during the controversy than at any other point in his short tenure.
Some critics saw his nods to immigrant struggles as evidence of misplaced loyalties. Others heard his promise to keep Colorado Springs from becoming a sanctuary as selling out. Mobolade said he considered it a good sign that the antagonism came from both sides:
” I believe sometimes it takes an immigrant to remind us what’s the best of us as Americans”.
Steven Rich contributed to this report from Washington.
