The Democrat Mayor of Denver, Colorado, claims he’d use city law enforcement officers to block President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, envisioning a Tiananmen Square-style showdown with federal officials.
Asked by Denverite this week whether city police might aid federal deportation forces, Mayor Mike Johnston replied, “Absolutely not…we won’t do it.”
He went on to say he believed Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) would likely deny Trump use of the Colorado National Guard.
“Unless they were planning on bringing national guards mobilized from Texas or Alabama to come invade Colorado, I don’t know where they would find the forces to begin to do that,” Johnston said.
“And that seems to me like a very, very bad idea from start to finish that no reasonable American would support.”
The mayor went on to float a theoretical face-off between federal and city forces that he compared with the iconic Tiananmen Square student-led protests in China in 1989, imagining throngs of Denver residents blocking federal agents from entering their city.
“More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” Johnston said. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”
While the mayor attempted to draw parallels between Denverites standing up to government forces and Tiananmen Square, he mistakenly conflated it with the iconic “Flower Power” moment from the 1967 anti-Vietnam War protests.
As Denver’s mayor opposes Trump’s deportation forces, the mayor of Aurora, Colo., where entire apartment complexes were taken over by armed Venezuelan gangs, has instead blamed the situation on the Biden administration’s open borders.
Meanwhile, Mayor Johnston joins the ranks of other Democrat elected officials who are pledging to resist or defy federal mass deportation efforts, including Democrat Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Mass. Gov. Maura Healey.
At the same time, President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar nominee, Tom Homan, has warned mayors and governors that federal immigration officials are coming for criminal illegals whether they like it or not.
“Well first of all, if they don’t want to help us, get the hell out of the way, we’re going to do it,” Homan told Fox News’ Lawrence Jones earlier this week.
“If I got to send twice the amount of resources to that city, that’s what we are going to do. If they give us access to the jail, that’ll mean less agents in their community,” Homan said. “For them pushing back and not letting us in the jail, it just means more agents are going to be in the community, so they’re hurting themselves.”
“Finally, I’ll say this they need to educate themselves. They need to review this Title 8, United States Code 1324 (iii) – read about that and don’t cross that line, because it is a felony to harbor and conceal an illegal alien from ICE. Read this statute. Don’t cross that line,” he warned.
