Pushing Boundaries: The Role of City Governments in an Era of Urban Migration
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“I took the border to them.”
From 2022 to 2024, over 210,000 asylum seekers from the U.S. southern border journeyed to New York City. Denver and Chicago received an estimated 40,000 asylum seekers each, with other metropolitan areas like Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Boston also welcoming tens of thousands of newcomers.
These cases represent a trend in migration that goes far beyond the United States and the recent uptick in asylum-seeker arrivals: across the globe, migrants overwhelmingly move to and live in cities. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 70 percent of the world’s refugees live in urban areas. In the United States, 2022 data indicated that 63 percent of all foreign-born residents and 60 percent of undocumented immigrants reside in just 20 metropolitan hubs.
With migrants moving to cities, cities have become the new border. The marginalization and exploitation—and associated human rights risks—that migrants typically face at national frontiers has followed them to the urban interior. The U.S. national government has enlisted municipal police forces to aid immigration enforcement efforts in cities, including at sensitive locations like schools. Similarly, forcible family separation, a routine Customs and Border Protection (CBP) practice at the U.S. border between 2017 and 2021, now also takes place in the U.S. interior through Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention and deportation.
Border politics have also reached cities. In 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbot began bussing thousands of migrants, some of whom claimed they were tricked into leaving, to Democrat-led “sanctuary” cities. Defending his decision to target cities like New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago, Governor Abbot stated, “I took the border to them.”
Stuck in Cities
As cities start to resemble the border, the liminality of national borders is also reproduced, further undermining migrants’ human rights. The literature on migration and borderlands has long recognized national frontiers as liminal places; that is, in between spaces of ambiguity, arbitrariness, and indetermination. In other words, when approaching and crossing borders, migrants often find themselves stuck in transition or in limbo, whether physically, temporally, legally, or emotionally. This liminality often adversely impacts migrants. They might face endless waits at border shelters, be granted only temporary legal status without a clear path to permanent residency or simply be kept in the dark about what their options are or if they have any.
In cities, migrants experience this same “stuckness” in ways that violate their human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In the United States, migrants with affirmative asylum cases (which are more likely to be filed in the interior) often wait an average of six years for a decision on their case. This long-term legal limbo undermines the right to asylum (UDHR Article 14). Similarly, asylum seekers in the United States must wait a minimum of 180 days after filing asylum claims to apply for work authorization. This prolonged wait has forced many asylum seekers in cities like New York into the uncertainty of the informal economy, where they are not guaranteed safe and dignified working conditions (UDHR Article 23). In addition to legal challenges, many asylum seekers in U.S. cities find themselves physically stuck. Some migrants are reluctant to leave their cities of first destination for fear of disrupting their jurisdictionally bound asylum legal case, which can last years. This undermines the right to free movement (UDHR Article 13). Similarly, after the uptick in migrant arrivals in 2022, cities like New York and Chicago began housing asylum seekers in temporary shelters. Given the shortage of pathways to permanent housing in these and other major U.S. cities, shelter stays became protracted, reaching 76 days on average in Chicago. Asylum seekers were forced to settle in often overcrowded and under-resourced dwellings that were never meant to be permanent, violating their right to adequate housing (UDHR Article 25). Ultimately, and perhaps most significantly for cities, these experiences and spaces of uncertainty and instability—of “stuckness”—prevent migrants from exercising their right to self-determination (UDHR Article 22). As their futures turn to days instead of years and their pathways to stability are cut off, migrants are denied the opportunities to choose how to live and contribute to their cities.
A Missed Opportunity
Keeping urban migrants in situations of uncertainty and instability not only puts them at greater risk of human rights violations, it also undermines their capacity to benefit urban societies.
Since the turn of the century, migrants have played a vital role in revitalizing U.S. cities. A 2019 study from the New American Economy showed that cities with large shares of migrant populations saw increases in home ownership, business and job creation, and overall population growth. Between 2014 and 2017, migration was the decisive factor in reversing population loss in cities like Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. During this same period, migrants contributed to 33 percent of total population growth in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas, helping many interior cities stay afloat economically. Indeed, in 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $97 billion in taxes, including $37 billion paid to state and local governments.
Yet, because migrants are often left in legal, physical, and emotional limbo, cities cannot unlock the full potential of their contributions. A study from the Center for American Progress suggests that providing undocumented migrants a pathway to citizenship could increase U.S. GDP by $1.7 trillion and lead to 438,800 new jobs by 2032, many of them in cities. In November 2023, more than 100 local chambers of commerce, businesses, and trade associations signed a letter calling on Congress to eliminate the waiting period for asylum seekers to receive work authorization to help alleviate a historic national labor shortage.
In addition to these foregone benefits, cities also bear explicit costs from keeping urban migrants in limbo. For instance, New York City leased 15,750 hotel rooms at a per diem of $156 to provide emergency temporary shelter to an estimated 70 percent of asylum seekers, including 49,460 individuals as of May 2024. In comparison, the cost of providing asylum seekers subsidized permanent housing through existing state- and city-level voucher programs would be only $72 a day for a two-bedroom unit. Investing in permanent, rather than temporary, housing would not only have saved the city billions of dollars, but it would have also provided migrants a humane and stable foundation from which to work, achieve self-reliance, and contribute to the city’s economies.
The Pivotal Role of City Governments
As border conditions follow migrants into cities, city governments can—and do—play an important role in helping migrants get unstuck and unlocking their human and economic potential. This is especially true within a challenging national political landscape.
In response to the national government’s failure to fast-track asylum seeker work authorizations, the city of Denver launched the Denver Asylum Seekers Program (DASP) in April 2024. Operating on a transitional support model, the program provides asylum seekers already in the city’s shelter system with six months of housing, food assistance, legal aid, and job training. This policy shifted Denver’s focus from emergency response to long-term inclusion and aimed to prepare asylum seekers to work in key local industries upon receiving work authorization.
In New York, New York City and State created the New York Migrant Relocation Assistance Program (MRAP) to help recently arrived families transition from the city’s shelter system to welcoming communities across the state. MRAP offers up to one year of rental assistance and supportive services to families relocating to upstate counties, while local nonprofits offer assistance with school enrollment, employment, and community orientation. In the absence of a national resettlement program for asylum seekers, MRAP created critical pathways for migrants to move onward to places where they could thrive.
And in Boston, the city government advanced several programs that promote long-term belonging of immigrant communities. This includes issuing “mental health mini-grants” to local partners to support the mental health and wellbeing of migrant communities and holding information sessions on pathways to legal stay for migrant workers.
These examples demonstrate how local governments are acting both individually and in unison to give a future to migrants otherwise in situations of impermanence and uncertainty.
But cities’ leadership comes at a cost. Welcoming cities and their mayors have recently become direct targets of the national government as it seeks to expand immigration enforcement at the local level. Tactics include taking legal action against mayors and cities, threatening or withholding federal funding for cities that do not cooperate with ICE, or calling for congressional investigations of city policies.
Some U.S. mayors have pushed back, reiterating their commitment to welcoming migrants.
For example, during a March 2025 House Oversight Committee hearing on “Sanctuary Cities,” the Mayors of Boston, Chicago, and Denver testified in defense of their local migrant programming and made the case that migration is a net benefit that makes their cities safer.
Still, national government pressure is impacting city government actions. Punitive bills and executive orders like the “No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities” Act (H.R.32) and “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” (Executive Order 14159), have led some mayors to roll back welcoming policies. This only further endangers the human rights of migrants, exacerbates their stuckness, and prevents cities from unlocking their human and economic potential.
“Where you’ve been doesn’t limit where you’re going”
As more migrants move to interior cities in search of safety and economic opportunity, the liminality of borders has followed them there. Instead of being stuck in limbo along national frontiers, migrants are now stuck in cities where they face increasing risk of violence and fewer opportunities to build a future for themselves and contribute to their adopted communities.
With national policies that focus more on country-wide and city-focused border enforcement than on unlocking the economic potential of migration, city governments have a role to play in protecting migrants, proactively uplifting their human rights, and giving them more options on where to live, where to work, and how to give back in the long-term.
From job training programs in Denver to building city-to-city migrant resettlement networks across New York, city governments are ensuring that migrants have more opportunities in their cities than they would along the border. While these actions sometimes are in opposition to national enforcement policies and expose city governments to risks of defunding, legal reprimand, and political pushback, they are responsive to the reality of urban migration and the needs of both urban migrant and receiving communities.
As is the case globally, migration into cities is the norm, not an exception. City governments must continue to leverage their resources and their autonomy to protect migrant rights and provide them opportunities for long-term housing, employment, and legal stay.
To do this:
- City governments should work together to identify pathways to leverage migration and work with migrant communities to reverse population decline, address labor shortages, and revitalize communities. A promising example is city-to-city resettlement networks, similar to those piloted in New York State. These networks facilitate the safe, dignified, and voluntary movement of people from one location to another while providing them with the resources they need to thrive and contribute. Resettlement networks result in better socioeconomic opportunities for immigrant families, revived local economies, and a more connected country.
- The national government should deprioritize punitive policies towards welcoming cities and instead work with city governments to enact bipartisan, common sense immigration policies that can revitalize local economies and communities. For example, the national government should expand robust, safe, and predictable pathways for businesses to hire foreign-born talent in key growth sectors. This would stem unsafe, irregular migration while giving local economies a much-needed boost.
- Philanthropies should directly resource city government actions that provide migrants with greater options for legal stay or resettlement, particularly actions that promote stable housing, economic inclusion, and provide legal counsel. International programs provide promising examples, such as the Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees, which directly channels philanthropic funding to city governments to implement inclusive projects of their own design.
As the mayor of Boston said during the Congressional Hearing on Sanctuary Cities:
By removing limits for urban migrants, city governments are expanding opportunities for everyone. This pivotal role should be enabled, resourced, and celebrated.
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[1] Luis Ferré-Sadurní, “What to Know About the Migrant Crisis in New York City,” New York Times, August 19, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/article/nyc-migrant-crisis-explained.html.
[2] Muzaffar Chishti, and Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, “After Crisis of Unprecedented Migrant Arrivals, U.S. Cities Settle into New Normal,” Migration Policy Institute, August 1, 2024, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/us-cities-innovations-integrate-arrivals.
[3] UNHCR, “Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018,” June 20, 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/media/unhcr-global-trends-2018.
[4] Mohamad Moslimani and Jeffrey S. Passel, “Key Findings About U.S. Immigrants,” Pew Research Center, September 27, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/.
[5] This paper takes migrants to mean predominantly asylum seekers and otherwise displaced persons.
[6] David A. Lieb, “Trump is Signing up Local Law Officers to help with Immigration Enforcement,” Associated Press, February 25, 2025; American Immigration Council, “The 287(g) Program: An Overview,” January 22, 2024. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/287g-program-immigration.
[7] Jordyn Rozensky, “The Biden Administration Routinely Separates Immigrant Familie,” National Immigrant Justice Center, January 19, 2022; Immigrant Legal Resource Center, “A Closer Look at DHS Interior Enforcement Practices,” July 26, 2023, https://www.ilrc.org/community-advocates/closer-look-dhs-interior-enforcement-practices.
[8] Office of the Texas Governor, “Texas Transports Over 100,000 Migrants To Sanctuary Cities,” January 12, 2024, https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-transports-over-100000-migrants-to-sanctuary-cities.
[9] David J. Goodman et al., “Bus by Bus, Texas’ Governor Changed Migration Across the U.S,” The New York Times, July 20, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/20/us/abbott-texas-migrant-buses.html.
[10] Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Aunt Lute Books, 1987); Nicholas De Genova, The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering (Duke University Press, 2017); Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013); Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (University of California Press, 2011).
[11] Andorra Bruno, “What Is Affirmative Asylum?” Congressional Research Service, October 24, 2024. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48249.
[12] National Immigration Forum, “Explainer: Asylum Backlogs,” January 23, 2024, https://immigrationforum.org/article/explainer-asylum-backlogs/.
[13] David Dyssegaard Kallick and Anthony Capote, “New Immigrants Arriving in the New York
City: Economic Projections,” Immigration Research Initiative, January 8, 2024, https://immresearch.org/publications/new-immigrants-arriving-in-the-new-york-city-economic-projections/.
[14] “Immigrants and the Growth of America’s Largest Cities,” New American Economy, July 10, 2019. https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/immigrants-and-the-growth-of-americas-largest-cities/.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Carl Davis et al., “Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants,” Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, July 30, 2024, https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/.
[18] Trinh Q. Truong, “Why Immigration Relief Matters,” Center for American Progress, February 1, 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/why-immigration-relief-matters/.
[19] American Immigration Council, November 16, 2023. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/business_sign-on_letter_to_mocs_ead_v2.pdf.
[20] NYC Comptroller, “Comparing Per Diem Hotel and Service Costs for Shelter for Asylum Seekers,” July 22, 2024, https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/comparing-per-diem-hotel-and-service-costs-for-shelter-for-asylum-seekers/.
[21] Christopher Mann, et al., “Permanently Housing Rather Than Just Sheltering Asylum Seekers Could Save the City Over $3 Billion Annually.” Win and NY Immigration Coalition, August 2023, https://winnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Housing-Instead-of-Emergency-Shelter-for-Asylum-Seekersbriefv4.pdf.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Desiree Mathurin, “Denver’s immigration reset moment: The six-month program to get people asylum seeker status and job training,” Denverite, April 10, 2024,https://denverite.com/2024/04/10/denver-immigration-program-asylum-job-training/.
[24] Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, “Migrant Relocation Assistance Program,” https://otda.ny.gov/programs/bria/Migrant-Relocation-Assistance/.
[25] City of Boston, “Pathway for Immigrant Workers,” January 15, 2025, https://www.boston.gov/departments/immigrant-advancement/pathway-immigrant-workers.
[26] This bill makes a state or political subdivision of a state ineligible for any federal funds the jurisdiction intends to use to benefit non-U.S. nationals (i.e., aliens under federal law) who are unlawfully present if the jurisdiction withholds information about citizenship or immigration status or does not cooperate with immigration detainers. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/32.
[27] Executive Order 14159: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-02006.pdf
[28] Learn more about the Global Cities Fund here: www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org/gcf
[29] Mike Toole et al., “Boston Mayor Michelle Wu defends ‘sanctuary city’ policies before Congress,” CBS News, March 6, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/boston-mayor-michelle-wu-testimony-congress-sanctuary-cities/.