Five months after launching an ambitious plan designed to help newly arrived migrants transition into more stable lives through temporary housing, job training and other supports, Denver officials said this week that the city will not continue the program next year.
City officials said the Biden administration’s border policies have greatly reduced the number of migrants coming into the U.S. in recent months, thereby making it unnecessary to maintain the Denver Asylum Seekers Program and other services Denver had put in place to support what had once been an influx of new residents.
The program had marked a shift in Denver’s strategy of housing migrants in massive temporary shelters to providing individual resources. When touting the program earlier this year, officials also said it was intended to help fill a worker shortage by preparing migrants for jobs in in-demand industries.
About 860 people are currently part of the program, which offers six months of housing, job training, language instruction and legal support in filing asylum claims, according to city officials.
In addition to ending the program, the city is closing its remaining migrant shelter at the end of the month, Jon Ewing, a city spokesperson who manages communications for Denver’s newcomer response, said Tuesday.
Denver, Chicago and New York have had to adapt over the past two years as their migrant populations have grown since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing thousands of migrants to Democratic cities in 2022.
The cities have scrambled to assemble social safety nets without devastating their budgets. Chicago and New York, for instance, put stricter limits on how long people can stay in shelters.
Although about 42,000 have arrived in Denver since 2022, Ewing said the city has not received a bus since June 10 and that only about 30 migrants arrived last week.
The large decrease in numbers means that migrants who come to the city can now find a place to stay within the city’s traditional shelter system, which is no longer overburdened as it was when thousands of migrants were coming in.
“It’s simply not needed in this current form in 2025. That’s a good thing,” Ewing said, referring to the asylum program and additional supports.
Ewing said the program will continue as it was intended for the more than 800 migrants currently participating, and the city is still trying to determine what elements of the asylum-seeker program may be carried over into the new year.
The six-month program, Ewing said, “came as a response to the situation on the ground” when the city was trying to assist thousands of migrants who had been living in temporary shelters find housing and work.
The current program “not only got us out of the current situation, it stabilized the lives of around 860 people,” he said.
“It’s going to give local employers a huge, huge lift when they’re finished and have their work authorization,” he said. “So we’re super proud of it. But at the same time, we need to see what makes actual sense for 2025.”
But the immigration landscape has largely changed over recent months, due to an executive action President Joe Biden signed in June that drastically reduced the number of migrants who could come into the United States.
Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Monday that since the Biden administration’s policy was announced in early June, encounters between ports of entry at the border have decreased by more than 50%.
The agency said that in August, Border Patrol recorded about 58,000 encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border, which is 68% lower than August 2023.
Those numbers are “keeping the Border Patrol on track to record the lowest number of annual apprehensions along the southwest border since fiscal year 2020, and lower than the monthly average for fiscal year 2019, the last comparable full fiscal year prior to the pandemic,” the agency said.
Denver had previously announced a $90 million budget for addressing new arrivals in 2024, but as of now, about $22 million will go back into the general fund for 2025, Ewing said.
The 2025 budget will be slashed to $12.5 million, which Ewing said should primarily come from unspent dollars in 2024.
Ewing said Denver is “enormously proud” of its asylum-seeker resource program and its broader migrant response. The recent changes from the Biden administration have “been a big thing locally” that has helped “stabilize the situation,” he said.
The city has an emergency plan ready should another surge of arrivals begin, “but the goal is to never get there,” he said.
