Two of our reporters – Nico Brambila and Tom Hellauer – are in El Paso, Texas, where they are chronicling the illegal immigration crisis that is spilling over into America’s interior cities, such as Denver.

Why?

To see first hand what the situation is like on the border.

We want to talk to El Paso officials, residents, business owners and nonprofits about the effect of the border crossings on the city that sits directly across from Ciudad Juárez in west Texas along the Rio Grande River, which serves as a natural boundary between the U.S. and Mexico.

And we have a lot of questions – to the immigrants who illegally crossed the border and to the residents.

Notably, why is Denver attracting tens of thousands of immigrants from 600 miles away? And what lessons might Denver learn from El Paso that could help Denver’s response to the crisis? 

Ultimately, we hope to understand what’s happening at the border so that we can do a better job of chronicling the crisis, which has so far cost Denver $40 million to feed, house and transport nearly 38,000 immigrants who have arrived in Colorado’s most populous city roughly within the past year.

Here’s the first dispatch from the border:

As border crossings go down in El Paso, Denver sees immigrant arrivals decrease | Border Crossroads

And here’s our previous coverage of Denver’s immigration crisis:

Why Denver Mayor Mike Johnston prefers to talk about work authorization, not border security | ANALYSIS

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