A vacant elementary school building in Denver, Colorado, may allegedly be turned into a migrant shelter, Fox News reported.

A spokesperson for Democratic Mayor Mike Johnston said the building has been “identified as a potential migrant shelter, but nothing is final and there’s no paperwork,” claiming that the city has been “looking for buildings that would be suited as an emergency shelter.” 

“The location you reference has been looked at as a possible site to provide temporary shelter for newcomers,” Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for the Denver mayor’s office, said. “No decisions have been made, nor contracts signed.”

“It’s also probably worth pointing out that very few newcomers are in shelter at this time. In all of August, we saw around 150 people come through our shelter system, many of whom stayed for only a matter of hours before departing for other locations.”

In April 2024, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced plans to cut $45 million from city agencies including the police to help fund a program to deal with a recent increase in migrants.

Johnston announced at the time that the Colorado capital was budgeting $89.9 million to respond to “the newcomer crisis” with a program that his office said would be “providing a long-term, sustainable” solution “that avoids significant cuts to public services.”

Johnston spokesperson Jordan Fuja said that the “adjustment to the Denver Police Department’s budget was carefully crafted with safety leaders and Mayor Johnston to ensure there would be no impact to the department’s public services,” Newsweek reported.

“To say that Denver is ‘defunding the police’ is a willful mischaracterization of the budget adjustments, which actually just delays the purchase of new furniture and shifts the funding source for one cadet class,” Fuja said.

“In fact, Mayor Johnston has invested millions to add 167 new police recruits to our force in 2024, and will continue to invest in public safety to ensure every Denverite is safe in their city,” she added.