(Headline USA) Democrat-run sanctuary cities that once claimed to welcome illegal immigrants with open arms now find themselves paying extra to ship them back out.

Denver alone has spent at least $4.3 million in taxpayer funds to relocate illegals, while adding to the numbers in other Democratic-led cities such as Chicago and New York that are struggling to house asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela.

As immigrants arrive in on buses from the U.S.–Mexico border city of El Paso, Texas, officials offer them two options: temporary shelter or a ticket out. Nearly half of the 27,000 who have passed through since November 2022 chose bus, plane or train tickets to other cities in the U.S., according to city data.

Denver has bought nearly 3,000 tickets to Chicago and 2,300 to New York, almost half of the more than 12,000 tickets the city has purchased for migrants since November 2022.

Meanwhile, New York and Illinois are funneling their own dwindling resources into tickets out of town, creating a shuffle of illegal immigrants in the interior U.S.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago has used state funds to help buy tickets for more than 2,500 migrants who have family, friends or sponsors elsewhere, according to Chief of Staff Mary Krinock.

Technically, those claiming “asylum” status must affirm that they have a “credible fear” that prevents them from remaining in their country of origin. However, some of the Venezuelans living in Chicago have become so tired of its substandard conditions that they are now demanding to go back home and take their chances with the Maduro regime.

Data wasn’t yet available from New York, though the city is offering one-way plane tickets to anywhere in the world.

While immigration watchdogs continue to sound the alarm over what has been dubbed the “Great Replacement”—a cynical effort by the Biden administration to import future Democrat voters who will, within a generation, secure permanent blue majorities—in the short term, it is the governors of red states like Florida and Texas who have won the battle.

The transfer of illegals has gained momentum since Govs. Ron DeSantis and Gregg Abbott started chartering buses and planes to Democrat-led cities in what critics alternately waved off as political stunts and equated, hyperbolically, with human trafficking.

We are requesting that the Department of Justice open an investigation to hold DeSantis & others accountable for these inhumane acts. Not only is it morally criminal, there are legal implications around fraud, kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, and human trafficking.

— Dylan Fernandes (@RepDylan) September 18, 2022

More than a year later, though, some blue cities are now conceding defeat and admitting that the leftist open-border policies they helped support have been an unmitigated disaster.

And, in a show of what some might call brazen hypocrisy, they, too, are doing exactly what they once condemned.

The efforts show the increased pressures cities are facing as more illegals from around the globe are coming to the U.S. southern border, often on the promises of George Soros-funded activists that a socialists utopia awaits those willing to make the arduous trek.

Illegal border crossings topped 2 million during the government’s fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the second-highest number on record.

Over the less than three-year span of Biden’s presidency, the estimated total falls at more than 10 million—a number greater than all but the nine largest states.

Even charity organizations—the bleeding-heart philanthropies long dedicated to enabling violations of U.S. immigration law for the sake of humanitarian compassion—have been feeling less generous of late.

“It breaks my heart. It is like we have so many children and little ones that we know we can’t even help,” said Yoli Casas, executive director of Vive Wellness, which works with new migrants to Denver.

“There’s just no more room. There’s no more funding. There’s no nothing. We’re not prepared,” she said.

Although about 1,000 of Denver’s 12,000 tickets were bound for Texas or Florida, Democrats’ self-inflicted immigration crisis has frayed the party’s typically monolithic sense of collectivist cooperation as cities and states begin throwing each other under the proverbial bus.

Tensions flared between political leaders in January when Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis chartered buses for migrants to Chicago. Then-Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York City Mayor Eric Adams penned a letter urging Polis to stop and saying “overburdening other cities is not the solution.”

The cities are now beginning to put up a united front—while shifting much of the blame back onto President Joe Biden.

The mayors of Denver, New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles recently went to Washington to demanding that Biden redirect federal tax dollars to compensate them for the problem he created.

“You have mayors across the country that are struggling with this international crises and we need the federal government to do more,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who took office in May, told reporters this month.

Yet, others in the Windy City are looking inward at the problem, for which they have only themselves to blame. Among other things, city employees aren’t allowed to ask about immigration status, and law enforcement are barred from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

A few Chicago City Council members now want to gauge voter support for ending its decades-old “sanctuary city” status with a nonbinding ballot measure in the March primary.

“We have other Democratic cities—Denver, California, L.A., sending their people to Chicago, New York. They’re sending their migrants to Chicago. Why? Because they are saying, ‘We can’t take anymore,’” said Alderman Anthony Beale, who has backed the ballot measure, at a recent council meeting.

“Chicago has yet to say, ‘We can’t take anymore,’” he added. “We have to draw the line somewhere.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press