What secrets about Denver’s handling of the migrant crisis was Mayor Johnston trying to keep with the auto delete messaging system used by the mysterious “strike force” team he created in January?
Busted by CBS Denver News last week, none of the excuses put forth by Johnston’s team ring true for using the encrypted app called Signal that ensures no record is kept of any conversation. It’s the very opposite of a transparent government Johnston promised when campaigning for office.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and 14 of his staff “communicated about the city’s migrant crisis through an end-to end encryption app… the app, Signal, proceeded to automatically delete their initial conversations.”
This violates Denver open records law.
Prosecute @MikeJohnstonCO! pic.twitter.com/LPrpw2G0Yv
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) March 21, 2025
Denver insists it was needed to communicate about “the city’s migrant crisis,” and yet Biden’s border crisis was long past. They didn’t start using the app until after an emergency meeting to form what they called a “strike force” on Jan. 14, 2025.
What were they striking?
CBS made the unattributed claim it was due to public information requests from a Washington, D.C. foundation in mid-December that were also issued to 16 other states.
What the media failed to note about the decision to strike erase all future immigration-related discussions is that it came on the heels of Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman’s editorial in The Gazette with a headline that screamed:
Denver’s mayor offloads immigrants on Aurora
Johnston wasn’t worried about some D.C. foundation fishing expedition for documents, and Trump hadn’t even been sworn into office yet.
What worried Johnston is that Coffman’s article disclosed that Denver knew the NGO’s they funded were housing migrants in Denver’s neighboring cities and announced Aurora had filed for public record requests to help prove it.
Coffman revealed how he confronted Johnston about a media report that Denver was funding NGOs to place migrants in the now infamous Aurora apartment complex where TdA gang violence was reported.
From Coffman’s editorial:
“(Johnston) affirmed that Denver had contracts with nonprofits that have placed migrants from Denver to Aurora but he refused to confirm a number, where they were housed, or what resources they were given. He defensively said that information wasn’t available.
“Our city attorney, Pete Schulte, has obtained copies of the contracts between Denver and the two nonprofits through the ‘Open Records Request Act (CORA)” and we now know that the words “in Denver or in the surrounding communities’ was quietly inserted into these contracts to allow these nonprofits to put the migrants in Aurora without notifying us. It gives Johnston cover, should it become public, by allowing him to say that it wasn’t his decision to put them in Aurora; it was the nonprofits who made the decision.
“Also, contradicting Johnston’s statement that the information wasn’t available was a compliance provision in the contracts, again obtained via a CORA request, that required the nonprofit organizations to provide the information about how many migrants were sent to Aurora and where they were housed.”
Coffman concluded:
As the mayor of Aurora, I’m asking that Mayor Mike Johnston be transparent and tell the truth about what he did.
Instead, Johnston and his team created the “Strike Force” just days later that left no evidence of what they were trying to hide.
The news report reveals at least 14 city officials continue to communicate secretly with the mayor through the auto-deleted texts, including acting Denver City Attorney Katie McGloughlin and Chief of Staff Jenn Ridder.
Interestingly, Police Chief Ron Thomas and Public Safety Manager Armando Saldate declined to participate in their group chat.
And Denver still has not complied with Aurora’s public records request to tell them where, and how many migrants were relocated from Sanctuary City to their neighborhoods.
