Democrat Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is being blamed for giving violent, illegal gangs and cartels a “safe harbor” due to the city’s “weak immigration laws.” 

Johnston is one of four sanctuary city mayors who faced a high-stakes hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday to address the effects of those policies on their cities.

When Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., asked Johnston if he considers Denver a sanctuary city, he responded, “we don’t use that definition.”

“You don’t use the definition so you’re not a sanctuary?” Perry asked.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston will be questioned by Congress about his sanctuary city policies. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post.)

“We’re not going to sell out those values to anyone,” Johnston told the Denverite in a previous interview. “We’re not going to be bullied into changing them.”

When asked if he was prepared to go to jail for standing in the way of policies enacted by the administration, Johnston said he was not “afraid of that.”

“Yeah, I’m not afraid of that, and I’m also not seeking that,” Johnston told the Denverite. “I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people [on] how to solve hard problems.”

A former assistant director of the FBI told Fox News Digital that Johnston, and the other three mayors who spoke before Congress – New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu – are “not doing their cities any favors whatsoever.”

“Cartels are powerful and they infiltrate into any city where there’s lax law enforcement. The Trump law enforcement will get after the cartels in a big way, but they have a 50-year head start and, particularly over the last four years have become polycriminal organizations, branching out into smuggling people, extortion, fraud schemes and many other activities that are destructive to society in general,” Chris Swecker said. 

Swecker added that on top of the trouble with cartels and drugs, all four mayors are also hiding their true crime statistics. 

“The departments game the system and they are not participating in the FBI’s new crime stat capture system called National Incident-Based Reporting System. NIBRS captures more crime stats in a more granular way. Many of the blue cities don’t want that and claim that they don’t have the technology to implement the system. As a result, crime reporting is grossly understated,” Swecker said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Denver police union and Johnston’s office for comment. 

Fox News’ Bill Melugin, Ashley Papa, Adam Shaw, Stephen Sorace, and Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.