Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in New York arrested a Mexican-born illegal immigrant who sexually abused a child after being removed from the country five times.
According to ICE, the criminal immigrant, 36-year-old Raymond Rojas Basilio, sexually abused an 11-year-old child in the U.S.
Rojas committed this crime after being removed from the country five times and then re-entering once again on an unknown date and at an unknown location, without admission by an immigration official.
The New York Police Department arrested Rojas on Aug. 28, 2023. He was then convicted of forcible touching of the intimate parts of an 11-year-old victim by the Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Sept. 20, 2024. The court sentenced him to 60 days of incarceration and six years’ probation and required him to register as a sex offender.
U.S. Border Patrol first arrested Rojas, following three separate attempts to unlawfully enter the U.S. near Douglas, Arizona, in May 2002.
Border protection officials then arrested Rojas again on Jan. 6, 2012, at Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona, when he attempted to enter the country using a fake Arizona Driver's License and U.S. birth certificate. Just days later, on Jan. 11, border authorities again removed Rojas after he attempted to enter the country using fraudulent documents at another port of entry in Nogales.
New York ICE Field Office Director Kenneth Genalo commented on the arrest, saying: "This criminal has repeatedly shown he has absolutely no regard for our nation’s laws, as evidenced by his repeated attempts to unlawfully or fraudulently enter the United States."
"As this case illustrates, it only takes one successful unlawful entry to do irreparable harm to a member of our community," he continued.
He said that local "non-cooperation policies" in place had prevented ICE from taking immediate custody of Rojas following his sentencing by the Brooklyn court.
"However, due to the diligence of our officers, ERO New York City was able to rapidly apprehend this public safety threat before he could harm any other New Yorkers," said Genalo.
According to the statement, Rojas is currently in ICE custody pending removal to Mexico.
EXCLUSIVE: Baltimore ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officials on Thursday arrested eight migrants, including four convicted of child molestation and one murderer, in suburban Maryland.
The arrests happened during an exclusive Fox News ride-along with the government agency.
One of the migrants apprehended was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor and exposing himself in public several times. Another migrant, from the Philippines, was previously convicted of molesting a 10-year-old girl.
According to ICE, the one migrant convicted of murder was living in the U.S. on a permanent visa status.
"The people we are out for are the worst of the worst," Baltimore field office Director Matthew Elliston told Fox News' David Spunt. "It's not the average person who is in the country illegally. If we are targeting you, there is a reason."
The goal is simple for the Baltimore ICE Field Office: arrest and then deport as many illegal migrants with criminal records as possible. ICE agents’ goal at the start of the day was to capture eight targets, and all eight targets are now in custody.
Now all eight of those migrants are behind bars and await hearings in front of immigration judges and potential deportation.
According to ICE data obtained by the House Homeland Security Committee in September, there are at least 650,000 criminal illegal immigrants on the agency’s "non-detained docket," meaning they are free in the U.S. interior. Of those, 14,944 are murderers and over 20,000 have been convicted of sexual assault.
Although not officially a sanctuary state, Maryland, which is led by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore and a majority Democratic state assembly, is considered immigrant friendly. The city of Baltimore, meanwhile, has an official policy that does not allow law enforcement to ask residents about their immigration status.
ICE data indicates that Baltimore ERO arrested 570 migrants with either a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge in fiscal year 2024.
Police in Aurora, Colorado, have detained five more migrants in an armed home invasion and kidnapping that occurred early Tuesday morning.
This brings to 19 the number of migrants detained in the incident, which involved two victims being beaten, bound and kidnapped in a Denver suburb
A spokesperson for ICE told Fox News Digital 16 of those in custody have been identified as Venezuelan nationals in the U.S. without authorization and "are suspected of being members or associates of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua."
Tren de Aragua, or TdA, is a violent international criminal group that has been terrorizing Aurora residents for over a year.
The ICE official said the 16 suspects "will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings or hearings before an immigration judge."
Aurora Police Department Chief Todd Chamberlain said Tuesday the home invasion was "without question a gang incident."
However, Joe Moylan, a representative for the Aurora Police Department, told Fox News Digital police are still working to identify the suspects and have not yet been able to officially confirm whether the incident was gang-related.
Police were called to an Aurora housing complex, The Edge at Lowry Apartments, just before 2:30 a.m. Tuesday in response to a reported armed home invasion in which victims were assaulted and taken to another apartment in the same complex.
One of the victims, a man, sustained a stab wound but is expected to survive. Both victims are still at a hospital for treatment.
Moylan said Aurora police served an additional warrant at the apartment complex late Tuesday afternoon, resulting in their taking in the five additional migrants for questioning. He said police are working in conjunction with federal authorities, including Homeland Security Investigators who are helping to identify everyone involved.
Moylan said the Aurora police chief will likely address the incident further in another press conference once more details are confirmed.
Roger Hudson, a city council member in nearby Castle Pines, Colorado, who has had contact with the apartment owner, told Fox News Digital most people in the area believe Tren de Aragua is behind the incident. In recent months, the gang has only become "more powerful, more dangerous and more desperate," he said.
Hudson bashed the sanctuary policies passed by Colorado and the City of Denver, which he said have made it more difficult for state and local law enforcement to protect Coloradans from the likes of TdA.
"These policies make all of our communities less safe," he said. "This is lawlessness in the West, and you can't have that. That's not who we are as a country. That’s not who we are as a state."
Members of the House Border Security Caucus pledged to back President-elect Trump and his border czar Tom Homan’s mass deportation plans and vowed to crack down on "particularly pernicious" sanctuary city policies protecting "evil terrorists" and "cartel thugs."
Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, decried the historic level of illegal immigration under the Biden administration and the subsequent dramatic rise in migrant crime and gang activity, including the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua.
He called for the rest of Congress to stand behind Trump’s border security plans, saying that "every single one of these cartel thugs and evil terrorists needs to be deported immediately."
"The American people can finally breathe a very big and deep sigh of relief," said Babin. "The disastrous Biden administration is coming to an end and with that, that will be an end of open borders, asylum abuse, lawlessness, sanctuary cities – all these will end as well."
"But for us, as members of the House Border Security Conference," Babin went on, "our job is just begun."
California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock also said congressional Republicans’ "first priority" must be passing the Secure the Border Act. He said this would "assure that future presidents cannot subvert the law as Biden has."
"President Trump proved that simply enforcing laws can produce secure borders," he said. "But President Biden proved that a president intent on leaving our borders wide open can do so as well."
McClintock also said Congress needs to sanction sanctuary jurisdictions that are protecting criminal illegal immigrants from deportation.
Texas Republican Rep. Michael Cloud backed this idea as well, saying that Republicans in Congress need to "steel our spine" to defund agencies and cities that serve as magnets to draw illegal immigrants into the country.
"As Congress, we need to defund the wrong things. We need to stop sending these agencies' money to do bad things. And that includes the magnet that continues to draw people here through wrong and illegal processes," he said. "So, we will have to take the tough votes. We will have to do the job that's required of us in Congress… to make sure that we make good on the promise that we have given the American people."
Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs called the sanctuary city issue "particularly pernicious."
He mentioned how his home state governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, has pledged to resist Trump’s efforts to secure the border, saying she "unequivocally" "will not tolerate" the plan. Hobbs is one of several other Democratic leaders in over a dozen sanctuary states and dozens more sanctuary cities who have similarly pledged to resist the mass deportations.
"The problem is this, when you prevent the arrest of a criminal, illegal alien, you prevent the safety of the community," said Biggs. "When you ignore the law, the community is put at risk."
Biggs said mayors and governors doubling down on sanctuary policies and pledging resistance are "going to find themselves in hot water," and will likely face obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting criminal cartel charges.
"The cartel knows that Donald Trump means business and Tom Homan means business," he said. "And, hopefully, Congress means business."
An expert on the international criminal group Tren de Aragua (TdA) is warning that if sanctuary city and state policies are allowed to continue, the U.S. will soon be facing a slate of targeted assassinations across the U.S.
"The next step is targeted assassinations," said Jose Gustavo Arocha, a former lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army. "That is what has happened in Venezuela, what is happening in Latin America and that will happen here in the U.S."
Tren de Aragua, which means "Train from Aragua," is a massive criminal and terrorist organization that originated a decade ago in a Venezuelan prison. In addition to Venezuela, the group has already established a significant presence in Southern American countries, including Colombia, Peru and Chile and is present in 30 major U.S. cities.
According to Arocha, who fled the country after being imprisoned by socialist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro for eight months, TdA is a "state-sponsored, Maduro regime organization," formed and trained by the Venezuelan government to sow chaos, violence and discord throughout the Western hemisphere.
"Right now is the right moment to take action," he said. "If you let them grow, they are going to be more embedded in the communities, it's going to be harder to take any action against them, and it's going to be painful for U.S. society."
"When I listened last year to the 'defund the police' [movement], I said … ‘something is going to happen here because it is the same playbook," he explained. "Because if you don't have rule of law, you don't have police, it’s like a special ground for this kind of organization to establish and then they control the society because there are no police, there is no rule of law. They're going to do whatever they want."
Who will be in Tren de Aragua’s crosshairs? Arocha said TdA’s primary targets will be law enforcement officials, such as ordinary police officers, police chiefs and sheriffs, as well as any elected officials who attempt to crack down on them.
According to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, the TdA assassinations in the U.S. have already begun.
She pointed to the case of TdA member Yurwin Salazar who she said beat, tortured and killed a former Venezuelan police officer named Jose Luis Sanchez Valera in Miami in November 2023. In addition to the murder, Salazar also stole the former police officer’s life savings.
Agreeing with Arocha, Vaughan said that sanctuary policies are especially harmful to efforts to combat TdA.
"The sanctuary policies have to go," she said. "It's critical that these local law enforcement agencies are able to share information with ICE and vice versa."
"It's no coincidence that so many of these TDA members are in sanctuary jurisdictions like Chicago, Colorado and New York. That is not a coincidence. They know that they can hide behind their sanctuary policies and that is one reason they choose these communities because they know that the local authorities are not going to turn them over to immigration agents for removal," she explained.
While some individual states, such as Texas, have taken significant steps to root out TdA, she said that ultimately the federal government will have to lead the effort and incorporate all aspects of government to dismantle the group.
"It's too big a problem to solve at the local level," she said. "And one of the most important elements of that campaign to eliminate TdA has to be building more effective partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, particularly in the areas where TdA has been operating, some of which are sanctuary jurisdictions. So, this artificial obstruction between local law enforcement agencies and ICE that's been imposed for political reasons has to end."
Incoming border czar Tom Homan will meet with New York City Mayor Eric Adams in the Big Apple on Thursday where they will discuss the city’s ongoing migrant crisis and ways of deporting criminal illegal migrants who have been terrorizing the city’s streets.
The pair is scheduled to meet at City Hall at 1 p.m. and then hold a press conference at 3 p.m., according to the mayor’s office.
The main focus of the meeting is to weed out migrant criminals in the sanctuary city and deport them, as opposed to those who are undocumented, a source familiar with the matter tells the New York Post.
Homan, a hardliner on immigration, has vowed to enforce Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigration and carry out his mass deportation agenda. Homan has said he wants to primarily deport those migrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety.
Adams has at times been critical of the federal government, including the Biden Administration, for its lack of financial support over the last four years as New York City has struggled to cater for the unprecedented influx of migrants -- costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The blue city has seen more than 225,000 migrants arrive since 2022, a surge that coincided with a spike in migrant crime in the city with the bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua getting a foothold in the city.
Migrant arrivals have dropped sharply in recent weeks, with Adams attributing the dip to executive orders by the Biden administration that have limited the ability to claim asylum in the U.S. and have been tied to a sharp drop in apprehensions at the border itself. He also linked it to strategies taken by the city itself to help relocate migrants, including case management and offering tickets to 47,000 migrants so they can reach their "preferred destinations."
Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding to sanctuary cities who do not cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.
The city’s sanctuary city status stems from a 1979 class action suit brought against then-Gov. Hugh L. Carey and Mayor Ed Koch that resulted in the "Callahan Decree" – which instituted a right-to-shelter for homeless men. It has since been used as a tool to attempt to shelter homeless migrants who have descended on the city. Adams has previously criticized it being applied to migrants.
Adams has been taking a more hawkish approach to illegal immigration in recent weeks, announcing that 25 shelters are in the city and state are being closed in the next few months. He has also suggested that immigrants charged with crimes do not necessarily deserve due process.
"We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response," Adams said on Tuesday.
Adams has taken a more muscular approach to illegal immigration than some of his Democratic counterparts in other blue cities across the country, some of whom have promised resistance to the plan by the incoming Trump administration.
He has indicated his willingness to work with Homan on the deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions while stressing the importance of work authorization, case management and protection from deportation for those who have not committed violent crimes while here.
"I would like to speak with our border czar and find out what his plans are. Where our common grounds are, we can work together. And I strongly believe, my history is sitting down with those across the aisle with different ways of thinking and sit down and share my ideas," Adams said last week.
"I believe I have some ideas that could deal with this issue, and we can reach what the American people have been saying to us: secure our borders, address the people who are committing violent acts in our country and make sure that … our citizens are going to be safe."
Adams apparent shift to the right even left some speculating that Adams may rejoin the Republican Party, a prospect he didn’t rule out last week.
Meanwhile, voters in the state of New York support the deportation of illegal immigrants, according to a new poll. The Siena College New York State Poll found that 54% of respondents say the state should support any Trump administration efforts to deport migrants living illegally in the state, compared to 35% of respondents who oppose the plans.
Strong support for President-elect Donald Trump's deportation plan was found throughout the state, including New York City.
Fox News' Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
New York City has a "right to shelter" law, requiring the city to provide shelter for anyone who asks for it and has no other options.
Protest organizers said they were advocating for Hochul to intervene to prevent the migrants’ eviction and to provide new state funding to shelter the migrants.
Speaking during the protest, Angelica Perez-Delgado, president of the pro-migrant nonprofit Ibero-American Action League, said, "Our need right now is to ensure that people in our hotels are not evicted. We need leadership and money from Gov. Hochul right now to fund at least six months of housing and related services."
The migrants in Albany have been staying at a Ramada Plaza and Holiday Inn Express, both of which are being paid for by the New York City government and are set to close this month.
The hundreds in Albany are just a fraction of the 58,000 migrants being housed by the city of New York and the more than 223,000 migrants who have received taxpayer aid since 2022.
According to a report released this year by the New York City Comptroller’s Office, the city is projected to spend $987 million in two years on contracted hotels for tens of thousands of migrants. In total, the city is projected to spend more than $12 billion in responding to the migrant surge through fiscal 2025.
Since the election of President-elect Donald Trump last month, however, the city has moved to scale back its shelter program, closing some 12 shelters by the end of the year.
NYC HOME TO NEARLY 60K ‘CRIMINAL’ MIGRANTS: REPORT
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been behind many of the moves to crack down on services for migrants, saying, "We have been wasting taxpayers’ money for far too long."
The city has already shuttered two hotels-turned-migrant shelters: the Hotel Merit in Manhattan and the Quality Inn JFK in Queens. Eight more shelters in Dutchess, Erie, Orange and Westchester counties are also set to close by the end of the year.
The protest against the closures was organized by a group called Columbia County Sanctuary Movement and a coalition of local nonprofits.
One of the protest leaders, Bryan McCormack, co-executive director of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, said migrant families "should not be forced to abandon their jobs or uproot their lives to return to New York City shelters."
Speaking with Fox News Digital after the rally, McCormack said it is important to quickly find the migrants shelter as the harsh New York winter approaches. He also said New York City has used the crisis and migrants as a "political football" and "mismanaged the whole process."
He said the migrants being sheltered in the hotels have "already established gainful employment and a life here" and have "been a major contributor to New York's communities, cultures and economies."
"As somebody from upstate New York, I see every day how the immigrant community has impacted our lives as New York residents, from the food that's put on our table to the revitalization of our cities through construction to caring for sick and elderly folks throughout the pandemic and on to now," he said. "So, we hope that they will be able to continue to contribute to the capital region's culture and economy and make a full integration into our community."
New York State Assembly member Matt Slater, however, told Fox News Digital that the protesters outside Hochul’s office are "out of touch" with the real feelings of New Yorkers about the migrant crisis.
"New Yorkers have had it," he said. "My constituents are demanding accountability. They want to make sure that we live in a state that respects the rule of law, that understands that illegal immigration is illegal. Hard stop."
According to a Siena poll published this week, a majority of New York voters (54% to 35%) say the state should support rather than oppose the upcoming Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants in the state.
"It is a real concern for my constituents in the Hudson Valley," said Slater. "If people are protesting the fact that we're finally getting real about illegal immigration, they should open their own doors and welcome these people in. By all means, no one's stopping them. But to sit here and say that taxpayers should be fronting billions of dollars to continue to incentivize those who are breaking our laws is madness and insanity."
Slater said that though he is hopeful about the Trump administration clamping down on the border, he said New York state and city governments must also do their part.
According to Slater, New York, which is a sanctuary state, allocated $4.3 billion of taxpayer money in the latest budget to provide a host of services for migrants, like housing, clothing, food and cellphones.
"We cannot continue to allow a state government, a city government, to continue to incentivize illegal immigration by utilizing taxpayer dollars," he said. "It is wrong, and it must end."
San Diego County has voted to further block county cooperation with federal immigration authorities ahead of an expected deportation push by the incoming Trump administration next year – a move quickly slammed by a top local Republican.
The resolution goes further than California’s existing ‘sanctuary’ law, which generally limits law enforcement's cooperation with ICE. The vote was approved in a 3-1 vote by San Diego County’s board of supervisors.
The resolution says that the county will not provide assistance or cooperation to ICE "including by giving ICE agents access to individuals or allowing them to use County facilities for investigative interviews or other purposes, expending County time or resources responding to ICE inquiries or communicating with ICE regarding individuals’ incarceration status or release dates, or otherwise participating in any civil immigration enforcement activities."
When ICE is aware of a suspected illegal immigrant in local or state custody, it will lodge a detainer with law enforcement, typically requesting that the agency is notified ahead of their release and in some cases held until ICE can take custody of them.
ICE says this helps detain illegal immigrants without having to go into communities and gets illegal immigrant offenders off the streets. Sanctuary proponents say that such policies chill cooperation between law enforcement and otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants.
"When federal immigration authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Border Patrol, coerce local law enforcement to carry out deportations, family members are separated and community trust in law enforcement and local government is destroyed," an overview of the resolution claims. "Witnesses and victims who are undocumented or who have loved ones who are undocumented are afraid to come to the County for help, which includes calling local law enforcement. This puts the public safety of all San Diegans at risk."
The vote comes just over a month before President-elect Trump will be sworn into office. He has pledged to launch a "historic" mass deportation operation once in office to remove millions of illegal immigrants from the country.
San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Nora Vargas said that California’s current sanctuary laws restricting ICE deportations don’t go far enough.
"While the California Values Act significantly expanded protection from deportation to California residents, it fell short of protecting all residents, because it allowed agencies to still notify ICE of release dates and transfers individuals to ICE without a warrant in some circumstances," she said.
The resolution echoes a similar policy enacted in 2019 by Santa Clara County.
Supervisor Jim Desmond, a Republican who provided the sole nay vote on the resolution, slammed the passage of the law. He previously told Fox News Digital that the move was part of an effort by some Democrats to "Trump-proof" the state.
On Tuesday he said the vote is a "direct betrayal of the people we are sworn to protect."
"This reckless measure not only goes far beyond California's already extreme Sanctuary State laws but actively endangers our communities by shielding illegal immigrant criminals from deportation. Consider this: under this policy, law enforcement is prohibited from notifying ICE about individuals, in custody, who have committed violent and heinous crimes, including: Rape and stalking, Assault and battery, Burglary, Child abuse and more," he said.
He said he has already been in touch with members of the incoming Trump administration and "will fight relentlessly to undo this disastrous policy and ensure that illegal immigrant criminals are removed from our neighborhoods."
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday the shutting down of dozens more migrant shelters, as the "sanctuary" city continues to see a drop in arrivals and as Adams continues to take a hawkish stance on illegal immigration.
Adams announced that 25 shelters are being closed in the next few months. The locations include the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Shelters are also slated to close outside of New York City in Albany, Buffalo and Poughkeepsie.
The blue city has seen more than 225,000 migrants arrive since 2022, a surge that coincided with a spike at the southern border and also a strategy by Texas to bus migrants to cities like New York City to relieve pressure on the border state.
Now, his administration says there has been a 22-week drop in migrant arrivals into the city, allowing for the closure of many of the shelters used to house the influx.
Adams, who has been deeply critical of the federal government’s handling of the migrant crisis, linked the drop in numbers to executive orders by the Biden administration that have limited the ability to claim asylum in the U.S. and have been tied to a sharp drop in apprehensions at the border itself.
He also linked it to strategies taken by the city itself to help relocate migrants, including reticketing and case management.
"Thanks to our smart management strategies, we’ve turned the corner, and this additional slate of shelter closures we’re announcing today is even more proof that we’re managing this crisis better than any other city in the nation," Adams said in a statement. "Our intensive case management, paired with 30- and 60-day policies, have helped more than 170,000 migrants take their next steps on their journeys, because migrants don’t come here to live in our shelter system — they come here to pursue the American Dream."
"We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response," he said.
Adams has taken a more muscular approach to illegal immigration than some of his Democratic counterparts in other blue cities across the country, some of whom have promised resistance to the plan by the incoming Trump administration.
While he has stressed the importance of work authorization, case management and protection from deportation for some, he has expressed openness to working with the incoming Trump administration and border czar Thomas Homan on the deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions.
"I would like to speak with our border czar and find out what his plans are. Where our common grounds are, we can work together. And I strongly believe, my history is sitting down with those across the aisle with different ways of thinking and sit down and share my ideas," he said last week. "I believe I have some ideas that could deal with this issue, and we can reach what the American people have been saying to us: secure our borders, address the people who are committing violent acts in our country and make sure that … our citizens are going to be safe."
Meanwhile, voters in the state of New York support the deportation of illegal immigrants, according to a new poll. The Siena College New York State Poll found that 54% of respondents say the state should support any Trump administration efforts to deport migrants living illegally in the state, compared to 35% of respondents who oppose the plans.
Strong support for President-elect Donald Trump's deportation plan was found throughout the state, including New York City.
Fox News' Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
As Democratic Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says he would be willing to go to jail over his opposition to the Trump mass-deportation plan, a new study claims the mayor’s Blue city has spent a whopping $356 million of taxpayers' hard-earned money on migrants.
The eye-popping sum, which amounts to $7,900 per foreign national in the city, was revealed by an updated analysis last week by the Common Sense Institut (CSI), a non-partisan research organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the U.S. economy.
The group says it used city data to land on the stunning sum, which equates to 8% of the city’s 2025 budget of $4.4 billion. The figures combine the city’s budget as well as regional education and healthcare organizations.
Denver has seen an unprecedented influx of migrants arrive in the city under the Biden-Harris administration and Johnston has already slashed city services to house and feed those migrants. Cuts included reducing services at recreation centers and stopping the planting of spring flower beds, while the city tapped into a contingency fund to pay for the spiraling costs.
The CSI claims that the bulk of the $356 million spent on migrants was through education, with the city also splashing out on healthcare, hotels, transportation and childcare. Denver is a sanctuary city, meaning it does not enforce immigration law, nor does the city cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The group says that about 45,000 migrants have arrived in the Denver metro area since December 2022, with 16,197 migrant students enrolling in Denver metro schools.
"The total cost to Denver metro schools related to new migrant students is $228 million annually, which would equate to 1-2% of the total state K-12 education budget for the 2024-25 academic year," the group writes.
"Previous CSI reporting estimated the per-student cost of instruction and support in the Denver metro to be $14,100 per year. Assuming this cost across all recent migrant students totals $228 million.
Meanwhile, Denver doctors earlier this year said that the migrant crisis had pushed the state’s hospital system to its breaking point and was causing a humanitarian crisis.
The CSI study estimates that emergency departments in the Denver metro area have delivered an estimated $49 million in uncompensated care to migrants.
"With 16,760 [migrant] visits to Denver metro emergency departments from December 2022 to the present, providers would have delivered $49,124,029 of uncompensated care to migrants.
The study reports that at the height of the migrant influx in January 2024, officials estimated Denver was going to spend $180 million through 2024. Actual expenditures tracked by the city now show it will spend about $79 million.
"Of the total, 34.5% has been spent on facilities including hotels, 29.4% on personnel, 14% on services, and 11% on food," the report finds.
Johnston said during a recent interview that he was prepared to protest against anything he believes is "illegal or immoral or un-American" in the city – including the use of military force – and was then asked if he was prepared to go to jail for standing in the way of policies enacted by the administration.
"Yeah, I'm not afraid of that, and I'm also not seeking that," Johnston said. "I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people [on] how to solve hard problems."
Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar" designate, told Fox News' Sean Hannity this week that he would jail Johnston if he broke the law in shielding illegal migrants.
"All he has to do is look at Arizona v. U.S., and he would see he's breaking the law. But, look, me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing. He’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail."
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Sunday said leaders of sanctuary states and cities should have to explain why they deserve federal dollars to a new congressional subcommittee bent on cutting government waste.
Greene, who was tapped to lead a subcommittee working with the Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), laid out how she hopes to cut government spending during an appearance on "Sunday Morning Futures."
One area Greene said she wants the subcommittee to investigate is tied to the immigration crisis.
"I'd like to talk to the governors of sanctuary states and the mayors of sanctuary cities and have them come before our committee and explain why they deserve federal dollars if they're going to harbor illegal criminal aliens in their states and their cities," she said.
Greene specifically noted the death of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was brutally murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus in Athens in February. Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant, was convicted in her murder. Ibarra had been granted a "humanitarian flight" from New York City to Atlanta in September 2023.
Greene also laid out a slew of other areas that could face the chopping block under the subcommittee’s plan to cut government spending.
"The way to do that is to cut programs, contracts, employees, grant programs, you name it, that are failing the American people and not serving the American people's interests," Greene said.
The congresswoman said government-funded media programs like NPR, which she claimed "spread nothing but Democrat propaganda," will be under the subcommittee’s microscope.
She also said it will investigate active government contracts and programs to see if they still "make sense" or if "their purpose has expired."
Greene mentioned government workers who have been working remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic – which forced many across the workforce, both in the government and private sectors, to work from home.
"We're also looking at many – we have thousands – of buildings that the federal government owns and pays for with over $15 billion a year, but yet those government buildings stood empty and these government employees stay at home."
Greene called these points "failures" in the government’s service to the American people.
"And we don't care about people's feelings," Green said. "We're going to be searching for the facts and we're going to be verifying if this is worth spending the… American people's hard-earned tax dollars on."
