Denver Democratic Mayor Mike Johnston said there would be mass public resistance if President-elect Donald Trump implemented a mass deportation effort of illegal immigrants from federal forces, likening it to a “Tiananmen Square moment.”

On June 3, 1989, after weeks of student moments in Beijing, China, the Chinese communist government declared martial law and sent troops to Tiananmen Square. Government troops entered central Beijing on June 4; many people — estimates range from hundreds to thousands — were killed, including demonstrators, bystanders, and soldiers.

“About 42,000 migrants have arrived in the Denver metro area since December 2022, about 1,800 of which have now been authorized to work as a result of city-led efforts,” Common Sense Institute Colorado reported in May 2024. “The Common Sense Institute estimates city, education, and healthcare organizations have spent an estimated $216 million to $340 million on the response to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide educational and healthcare services. … The uncompensated care to migrants in Denver area hospitals is estimated to cost $123 million to providers for care received at emergency departments. … To date, the City of Denver has spent an estimated $70 million in migrant response goods and services.”

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Asked by The Denverite if pressure from the incoming Trump administration would change how Denver treats immigrants, Johnston answered, “The short answer is, we won’t change that, because those are one of our core values. And we’re not going to sell out those values to anyone. We’re not going to be bullied into changing them. … I think we are gonna continue to be a welcoming, open, big-hearted city that’s gonna stand by our values.”

Johnston insisted that taking the right to work away from illegal immigrants would “cripple the American economy.” He said of the idea that Trump might elect to use federal forces to round up illegal immigrants, “I do not believe that our governor is going to let them use our [Colorado] National Guard at the state level. Unless they were planning on bringing national guards mobilized from Texas or Alabama to come invade Colorado, I don’t know where they would find the forces to begin to do that.”

“More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” Johnston continued. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right?” You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”

Johnston may have conflated the Tiananmen Square massacre, where there was no evidence of someone confronting soldiers with a rose, to a moment on October 21, 1967, when roughly 100,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the war in Vietnam. Then a Magnum photographer, Marc Riboud documented proceedings. A famed photograph showed 17-year-old Jan Rose Kasmir holding a chrysanthemum flower up to a group of National Guard soldiers.