DENVER — The City of Denver is backtracking on its plan to use a former elementary school in the Sunnyside neighborhood as an emergency shelter for immigrant arrivals.
Back in September, Denver7 reported city officials were looking into the possibility of using the site of the former Remington School on Pecos St. to house newly arrived immigrants, should they need it. However, after months of steady decline, a city spokesperson told Denver7 Wednesday they simply don't feel the need to use the space anymore.
"We're not seeing that emergency need, and we haven't for some time," said Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for the Denver Mayor's Office. "We haven't gotten a bus from Texas since early June."
Ewing told Denver7 that in the first three days of January 2024, 534 immigrants arrived in Denver. The city served 2,500 new arrivals in that month, alone.
There was a peak before then, too. In December 2023, the city saw more than 6,800 new immigrant arrivals. It received 144 charter buses filled with immigrant arrivals that month, according to Ewing.
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It was a completely different story months later, earlier this summer. Ewing told Denver7 that in July 2024, 214 immigrants arrived in the city. A month later, that number was just over 200 and in September, just under 200 new immigrants arrived in the city.
He attributed that to two different things: The first, the change in strategy by the city when it came to helping immigrant arrivals and the second was the Biden administration's executive action restricting asylum requests from immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border over the summer.
"It's like we flipped a switch," Ewing said. "A month before that, we were still seeing like 25 buses. Then it went to four buses and then it was done. When that order took effect, essentially, we just saw far fewer people arriving."
Jason Kirwood, who's lived in the Sunnyside neighborhood for two decades and lives near the vacant school, told Denver7 he was happy to see the city backtrack its plan.
"This was just not a good location for it. It's a very quiet neighborhood. There's no facilities around here for them or anything like that," Kirwood said. "I just don't think it was a well thought out position, and they didn't really want to give us much notice about it or information about it. It looks like there is no influx of people coming in anymore, and so there's no no need for it."
However, city officials maintain if there were to ever be another immigrant influx in Denver, like the one we saw months ago, they're equipped with the tools to handle it effectively.
"We would emergency activate employees, just as we had before," Ewing said. "It could be any number of things. It could be city buildings that are being used for shelter. It could also be boundaries and hotel rooms, any number of things."
"The work doesn't end. It's just that this emergency phase, I do believe, is behind us," he added.
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