Denver, Colorado, a self-described “sanctuary city,” has cared for more than 41,000 illegal immigrants over the past two years. The new arrivals have drained city resources and led to resentment from locals. The same can be said for other blue cities across the United States. This Washington Examiner series, Cost of the Migrant Crisis, will investigate the strain on cities, schools, and healthcare within Denver in particular. Part Three is about the pressure on hospitals. To read Part Two on schools, click here. To read Part One, click here.
DENVER — Denver Health has been living on the financial edge for years.
The city’s 164-year-old safety net hospital, which has been running on margins that would make other hospitals sick, reported 20,000 visits made by illegal immigrants in 2023, which came out to $10 million in uncompensated care. The hospital provided $140 million in total care they were either not reimbursed for or only received a fraction of the cost from government programs.
Healthcare workers want to help — they won’t turn anyone away seeking emergency care, but they know they can’t keep hemorrhaging money.
“It’s getting really hard to take care of them both in terms of their inability to pay but also just the sheer volume of patients we weren’t expecting,” Dr. Steven Federico said.
Denver, a city of 710,000, has cared for 41,380 illegal immigrants over the past two years, providing food, shelter, education, and healthcare.
Most were bused in from Texas. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), in an effort to highlight his dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s immigration policy, started sending thousands of illegal immigrants who had crossed the southern border to Democrat-led locales like Denver, New York, and Chicago.
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Free healthcare
In the Mile High City, that meant public health staff at the city’s welcome centers getting stretched thin accommodating the new arrivals.
“By the time they get to us, they’re totally exhausted,” Dee Dee Gilliam, a public health nurse with the Denver Department of Human Health and Environment, said.
After arriving in Denver, the illegal immigrants get quick health checks courtesy of the city and are offered vaccines that include varicella, TDap, MMR, flu, and COVID-19.
“We’re looking for the respiratory diseases,” Gilliam said. “We’re looking primarily for symptoms of COVID or flu. The skin diseases we’re looking for are Mpox or varicella or measles.”
Beyond that, many of Denver’s undocumented migrants who get sick or come to the city sick end up seeking care at Denver Health, which already serves nearly 25% of the city’s residents, including “special populations,” people living in poverty, pregnant teenagers, addicts, victims of violence, and the uninsured. Illegal immigrants get free or drastically reduced access to medical care, including medical devices and medication, both over the counter and prescription.
Even though Denver Health has been overwhelmed with the rush of illegal immigrants, it recently launched a first-of-its-kind partnership with Denver Public Schools to bring four mobile health clinics set up to give free medical care to students and their families, most of whom are in the country illegally. The health services offered include physicals, vaccines, pediatric primary care, which includes acute and chronic illness care, as well as adult healthcare for parents and other family members.
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Claudia Gomez, a family nurse practitioner, sees patients four days a week from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
At Swansea Elementary School, a two-way dual language school in Denver, she is a one-stop medical shop for families and students. Gomez, an immigrant who moved to Denver from Mexico when she was 13, sees up to 14 patients a day.
“A lot of kids haven’t had a physical in years,” she told the Washington Examiner. “A physical checks their hearing, their vision, the vaccines, as well as developmental milestones.”
She’s also there to hear the harrowing tales from some of the youngest border crossers. One entire family she recently treated had been kidnapped by the cartel before making it out of the country. Gomez said she’s been blown away by the resilience of the patients she sees.
“I’ve had kids that come in and talk to me and say, ‘Yeah, when I was crossing the jungle,’ and for me, it’s so hard to picture myself going through that at such a young age, but they come in and are thriving,” she said.
For those who aren’t faring as well and struggling with trauma, Gomez offers them free mental healthcare.
If something is off physically and Gomez can’t fix it, she will refer patients to a specialist.
Denver Health hooks them up with discounted care and insurance.
One father who brought his young daughter to another mobile clinic told the Washington Examiner her ear had been hurting for a week. “It is good that they will give her medicine,” he said through a translator app. Most likely, for free.
Denver Health Foundation and the Denver Public School Foundation have raised $150,000 for the mobile clinic initiative that they hope to expand eventually.
Two-tier health system
But not everybody is happy about illegal immigrants getting free healthcare.
Nadine Simmons, a former retail worker at the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver, told the Washington Examiner she pays $1,000 a month in healthcare for herself and her daughter. She also lives paycheck to paycheck.
“It’s not politically correct to say it here, but why do their rights matter more than mine?” she said. “I work two jobs and I’m a mom. They get free medicine. They get to see a doctor whenever they want. I made an appointment the other day for my kid that’s three months away. It’s unbelievable, but you can’t say that in Denver.”
In nearby Aurora, where the University of Colorado Health’s flagship hospital is located, free healthcare services offered to undocumented immigrants are also straining resources.
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Even though the number of illegal immigrants making their way to Colorado has significantly slowed in recent days, the hospital saw more than 2,500 patients in three months, Dr. Richard Zane, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said.
Across the UCHealth system, 5,800 new migrant patients received care from November through January of this year, a 69% growth in patient population that Zane said cost “many, many millions of dollars.”
