Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s pledge to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation plans with “50,000 Denverites” and Denver police has sparked controversy and warnings of legal consequences from Republican leaders.
Johnston, a far-left Democrat, initially compared his plans to a “Tiananmen Square moment.”
“More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there. It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right?” Johnston said. “You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”
The mayor later walked back his remarks in a 9News interview.
“Would I have taken it back if I could? Yes, I probably wouldn’t have used that image. That’s the image I hope we can avoid.”
But Johnston maintained his opposition, saying he’s prepared to face jail time but hopes to “negotiate with reasonable people how to solve hard problems.”
Senator Rand Paul, R-K.Y., warned on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Johnston’s stance could have serious legal consequences.
“The mayor of Denver, if he’s going to resist federal law, which there’s a longstanding history of the supremacy of federal law, he’s going to resist that it will go all the way to the Supreme Court. And I would suspect that he would be removed from office.”
Paul distinguished between supporting deportations and their implementation:.
“I’m 100% supportive of going after the 15,000 murderers, the 13,000 sexual assault perpetrators, rapists, all these people. Let’s send them on their way to prison or back home to another prison… but you don’t do it with the Army because it’s illegal.”
Johnston has since claimed that he does actually support deportations of violent criminals, but in limited numbers.
“We think if you are a violent criminal that is committing serious crimes like murder or rape in Denver, you should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and you should be deported,” he said.
The controversy comes as Denver grapples with roughly 40,000 illegal immigrants arriving since December 2022, the highest per capita in the nation.
Other Democratic governors in Illinois, Arizona, and Massachusetts have joined Johnston in opposing Trump’s deportation plans, which American voters asked for in overwhelming numbers in the latest election.
Texas has offered 1,400 acres for deportation staging.
Paul characterized Johnston’s resistance as “a form of insurrection” and warned, “I think the mayor of Denver is on the wrong side of history, and really, I think will face legal ramifications if he doesn’t obey the federal law.”
A CBS poll shows 57% of voters support Trump’s mass deportation proposal, and 40% favor military involvement.