While Denver’s City Council bickered with Mayor Michael Hancock over city crosswalks, a mass migration crisis was already building at the nation’s southern border. Migrants have been illegally crossing the southern border and transported to cities across the country. It was only a matter of time until Denver – a “sanctuary city” – was subsumed.

Last week, The Gazette editorialized, “(we’ve) discussed this eventuality with Gov. Jared Polis and other ranking and wannabe Colorado politicians. Each responded as if this were a hypothetical bridge, one we may conceivably cross in the distant future. No one offered a plan. None had given it much thought.”

Organizations and advocates warned city and state leadership for several months. But, according to The Greeley Tribune, they found “top state leadership didn’t take them seriously aside from those working in the Office of New Americans.”

“We predicted imminent busloads of immigrants,” The Gazette added. “Colorado communities, most notably Denver, asked for it and would get what they wanted.” So it has.

Even with the prospect of Title 42 ending – thereby making it more difficult to prevent illegal migrant flows through the border – Colorado’s Democrats have been MIA.

We’re now a little over a week since Hancock declared a “state of emergency” over the influx of hundreds of illegal immigrants who have arrived in Denver.

For all practical purposes, Hancock is the only leading Democrat who’s said anything meaningful about this crisis. But he had no choice. The city is operating shelters at rec centers and other facilities, straining city resources such that, in Hancock’s words, “they’re on the verge of reaching a breaking point.”

After months of dithering, Hancock’s hand was forced. Now, he’s sounding the alarm. For some reason, his fellow leading Democrats – the grand poohbahs in Colorado’s ivory towers – permit this humanitarian and security crisis to continue unabated.

Where are the high-minded lectures about the moral and ethical implications of this crisis on the migrants – let alone the homeless in our communities? Where are the teach-ins, the protests or even the smoke signals?

Their silence is deafening.

We know more migrants are coming. We see the footage of them amassing at the border – some waving large Venezuelan flags – and crossing in anticipation. Organizations like El Paso, Texas-based Annunciation House are bussing the migrants to Denver and, under the guise of compassion, offering them false expectations.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court has given the Biden administration a reprieve – temporarily pausing an end to Title 42 – it’s too late. The word is already out. “Come to America and you will be sheltered, fed and comforted,” is all they will hear. “You will not be forced to leave.”

On my 710KNUS radio show, Texas U.S. Rep. August Pfluger didn’t mince words. “What I saw in El Paso just two weeks ago is more tragic now than it has been in my multiple visits this term in Congress,” he said. “I talk to these children who are 8, 9 and 10 years old… these kids are being trafficked. They’re being left in the middle of nowhere, in harm’s way, all along their trip. And they’re being used to get these drugs and other illegal substances, fentanyl, into this country.”

It will only get worse, Pfluger warned. “When Title 42 ends, the estimates on our southwest border on a daily basis are 15 to 18,000 people that will come across. Fifty to 100 people (a day) in Denver? I don’t think so. It’s gonna be a lot more than that.”

“Where are my Democrat colleagues from Colorado?” the Republican from Texas asked. “Why are they not standing up and saying, ‘this is a national security issue. This is the trafficking of people.’ This is the abuse and the human-rights violations that they seem to stand for. But they’re nowhere to be found.”

To be fair, the immigration system broadly and illegal immigration in particular have dogged Democrat and Republican administrations alike, and both have generally failed.

However, Republicans have emphasized border security for years. Say what you will about Donald Trump – he made border security a centerpiece of his administration and both of his campaigns. Trump led in acting firmly to enhance border security. “That’s the one good thing about Trump,” one Democrat admitted, suggesting this may be Biden’s greatest crisis.

Where are Colorado U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper (who politicized the crisis in a trivial tweet)? Colorado U.S. Reps. Crow, DeGette, and Neguse? Is Polis or Attorney General Phil Weiser doing anything?

Privately, some Democrats exasperatedly express their frustrations at the lack of action of their leaders amid a stark moral, ethical and security crisis.

They’re especially concerned about the growing challenge of the homelessness crisis already ripping through our communities. City resources – not to mention those of nonprofit food banks and shelters – are stretched thinner, providing for evermore migrants coming here illegally.

(Legal) immigration enriches our society. Providing help for those in need is important. My heart breaks for the migrants making their way to Denver through the most trying and dangerous circumstances.

But how can our governments and nonprofit organizations provide for eventually thousands of new, impoverished people – not to mention our own homeless? Unless Colorado’s Democratic leaders act decisively, we will inevitably reach the breaking point Hancock warned about.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and host of “The Jimmy Sengenberger Show” Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on News/Talk 710 KNUS. Reach Jimmy online at JimmySengenberger.com or on Twitter @SengCenter.