During a congressional hearing earlier this week, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston told lawmakers that the city is spending 90% less on the humanitarian response to the immigrant influx than at the height of the crisis last year.

So, what are Denver taxpayers still spending money on?

With housing accounting for the preponderance of the city’s expenses, the answer is not much.

Given the city is no longer providing shelter — and hasn’t for months because of the slowdown in the number of immigrants arriving in Colorado — Johnston spokesman Jon Ewing doubts the city will spend that much this year.

“The big spender for all of this was shelter,” Ewing said. “That’s really what drove the costs.”

Last year, officials had budgeted $90 million and returned $22.5 million to the general fund.

Officials budgeted $12 million for the response this year. Much of the spending now goes toward paying staff to hold work authorization clinics that the city is helping immigrants apply for. The city holds about two to three of them a month, with each event drawing about 100 immigrants, Ewing said.

Since April, the city has helped nearly 5,000 immigrants apply for work authorization.

To date, the city’s response has cost nearly $90 million, the bulk of which has been paid by Denver taxpayers.

Many of the immigrants, largely from Venezuela, came with not much more than the clothes on their backs, little-to-no money in their pockets and no familial support.

Venezuelans have been fleeing in droves amid the political instability and economic collapse in their home country.

Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled their country over the past decade under President Nicolás Maduro’s regime. More than 500,000 Venezuelans are estimated to be living in the U.S.

As an interior city more than 600 miles north of Mexico, the illegal immigration crisis at the border hadn’t spilled over into Denver until two years ago, when 90 immigrants were left to wander downtown in the cold. Traditionally, immigrants in previous waves have favored gateway cities, such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott alone bused nearly half of the more than 40,000 immigrants who have come to Denver since December 2022.

While no one has tracked the number of immigrants who have stayed in Denver, bus, plane and train tickets for onward travel suggest about half have stayed. That is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Golden to the Denver metro area in less than 18 months.

Abbott’s busing program targeted Democratic-led cities considered “sanctuary” jurisdictions. 

Although there is no formal definition of what constitutes a sanctuary city, general speaking, it refers to policies that discourage local law enforcement from reporting an individual’s immigration status to federal authorities.

At the height of the crisis last winter, Denver was sheltering 5,000 immigrants. At this point, the monthly costs had hit about $15 million, Ewing said.

“When I became mayor 20 months ago, Denver was already receiving buses of immigrants with little-to-no notice or coordination,” Johnston told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday, when Republicans grilled about the city’s “sanctuary” policies. 

“At one point we were receiving 10 to 11 buses a day, dropping off as many as 300 people, mostly women and children, and 10-degree weather, with only sandals and a T-shirt, leaving them in danger of freezing to death on our streets,” he said. 

The committee had summoned Johnston, as well as the mayors of Boston, Chicago and New York to talk about “sanctuary city” policies. The mayors defended their approach to the crisis. 

During the hearing, Republican members threatened to refer these mayors, including Johnston, to the U.S. Department of Justice for investigation.