Shortly before former President Donald Trump’s unexpected return to Democratic stronghold Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday — just five days ago Vote The next day, Albuquerque’s Democratic Mayor Tim Keller sent the former president a special welcome message.

“We’re still waiting for Trump to pay the half million he owes. Maybe he’s making a special Halloween delivery to Duke City? We won’t hold our breath,” Keller posted on social media with a photo of himself sitting next to a skeleton. desk.

Thursday marked Trump’s first visit to Albuquerque in five years after officials said he left an unpaid bill of $211,176 for public safety expenses from a 2019 rally at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho, part of the Albuquerque metropolitan area .

Fast forward five years, and the bill has snowballed over the years, including interest, to $444,986, according to the city of Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is just one of many cities where Trump’s campaign — in his three runs for the White House — has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills after holding campaign events, often leaving local governments saddled with large amounts of unexpected expenses that led to the situation. to exceed their budget.

ABC News spoke with officials from more than a dozen cities and municipalities where he has campaigned over the past few years; here, their rallies and events cost cities from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreimbursed expenses. Overtime pay for local police officers, firefighters, emergency services and other first responders deployed to guide and protect the crowds drawn by Trump campaign events.

Trump’s campaign’s failure to pay for such expenses continues even as the former president touts his support for law enforcement and promises better benefits and working conditions for them, while once attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, who supports the Defund the Police movement.

While Trump is not the only political figure whose campaign events have created extra public safety costs for local governments, his visits, which have brought thousands to tens of thousands of people to small towns, have often required more public resources than other new presidential candidates. That, combined with his unique and long political career in which he ran as a presidential candidate in three consecutive presidential election cycles, led to the bills piling up.

For example, Trump’s massive rally at the Santa Ana Star Center in the Albuquerque metro area in 2019 forced the city to close downtown, including City Hall, causing “extreme strain on resources” for the city. Police officers, first responders and other city workers assisting with the rally worked a total of 1,500 hours of overtime that night, according to the mayor’s office.

His office told ABC News that he sent the bills to Trump’s New York residences and Mar-a-Lago, and that a collection agency is now working to recover the debt.

Some cities choose not to bill the campaign at all, like Rio Rancho, which ended up with nearly $240,000 in expenses after helping Trump visit the Albuquerque metro area in 2019. A spokesman for the city said it chose not to seek reimbursement from Trump’s campaign because it determined that those costs were “necessary to ensure the health, safety and welfare of its citizens.”

Similarly, Trump chose not to bill his campaign in September after his massive rally in Nassau County, Long Island, cost $1 million in police overtime alone, prompting Democratic lawmakers to file a complaint against him with the Federal Election Commission, according to a review of the state’s Minority Budget Office . Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman alleges improper use of taxpayer funds for his presidential campaign.

Shanna Ports, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told ABC News that a state or municipal government can deploy official resources, such as police officers, to a presidential campaign event without reimbursement by the campaign if those resources are used “solely to ensure the safety of attendees.” – about how he would react to any coherent non-campaign activity.”

Tens of thousands of bills from recent campaign events leave cities in critical battleground states

But many other local governments that Trump visited to persuade key battleground voters, such as Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Erie, Pennsylvania, tried to get refunds from the Trump campaign without much success.

On Wednesday, Trump campaigned in Green Bay, Wisconsin; The April rally earlier this year left the city facing more than $33,000 in public safety costs, including roughly $24,100 in police overtime, the city told ABC News.

This was after Trump’s 2016 campaign left the city with more than $9,000 in unpaid bills after a campaign event. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign also has nearly $12,000 in unpaid bills from her 2016 rally, the city said. The city is still trying to determine the total cost of Trump’s latest visit.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit in July cost Green Bay $635 to deploy police, which the Harris campaign had yet to pay for as of October, a city spokesperson told ABC News.

In Pennsylvania, another battleground state, the city of Erie recently sent the Trump campaign a $63,190 bill for his September rally, but the campaign has yet to respond to the city’s request for payment, according to the city’s Communications Director Robert Lee.

The campaign had more than $35,000 in unpaid bills in Erie before the September visit; These included $5,200 from his rally in July last year and $32,000 from his rally in 2018. Erie’s spokesman also said the city plans to bill the Harris campaign “for still.” – to be determined expenses incurred by the city police and other agencies in connection with last month’s rally.

When asked about unpaid bills to local agencies, a Trump campaign official referred questions about local law enforcement and first response costs to the U.S. Secret Service.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service acknowledged in a statement to ABC News that despite the “significant” role local law enforcement played in the operation, there was no mechanism to reimburse local governments for the costs incurred in supporting the Secret Service.

“In our recent conversations with congressional leaders, we identified this as a critical need, given the important role played by our police and public safety partners,” the statement said. “We are grateful for the additional funding provided in the ongoing resolution and will continue to work with Congress to advocate for the resources necessary to support the city, county, and state law enforcement agencies that help us every day.”

How are cities finding new ways to get paid from campaigns?

Like Albuquerque, the El Paso, Texas, city council hired a law firm to collect more than half a million dollars in unpaid bills from Trump’s 2019 rally; That includes roughly $470,000 in public safety costs and a one-time late fee of about $99,000. . The city is still awaiting payment from the campaign, a spokesperson told ABC News.

In Tucson, Arizona, the city decided not to pursue nearly $80,000 in public safety costs from a Trump rally in 2016 and also decided not to pursue nearly $40,000 in public safety costs from Bernie Sanders’ rally there that year; because the city has determined that legal action may be taken. A spokesperson for the city told ABC News it would cost more.

Instead, when Trump returned to Tucson in September, the city demanded that the campaign pay the estimated public safety costs in advance, along with the cost of renting facilities; This secured the campaign’s total down payment of $145,222, including nearly $116,000 in police department expenses.

In the small town of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Trump’s visit in 2016 left the city with more than $47,000 in unpaid bills, and Clinton’s visit that year resulted in $6,800 in unpaid bills, cutting the city’s operating budget by nearly $62,000 that year. contributed to the increase in the dollar.

“Overall, this is a low expense overall,” Eau Claire budget analyst Corey Lee told ABC News, but added, “Ideally, we would like to recover costs for circumstances that are unforeseen or outside of normal city operations. “

“But we also have a responsibility to protect society no matter what the circumstances,” he said.

Lately, Eau Claire has been billing public safety expenses through venues rather than billing campaigns directly to ensure they get paid — including $4,000 from Sen. J.D. Vance’s visit in September and nearly $16,000 from Harris’ visit in August.

Wisconsin mayor: ‘We expect the refund to be made. Or we would say, ‘Don’t come.’

In Prairie Du Chien, a small town in Wisconsin with a population of just over 5,000, Trump’s campaign promises focused on border security and immigration. The event, held at the local high school’s arts center in September, left the city with $17,000 in public safety expenses.

The campaign paid the local school district to rent the arts center in advance of the event, but received no response when Prairie du Chien Mayor Dave Hemmer asked for reimbursement for public safety expenses ahead of the event.

“He basically said we don’t usually do that. And I said, I think that was put in polite terms – I think that’s a bunch of bullshit,” Hemmer said of his conversation with the campaign official before the event. Hemmer said he also asked staff about refunds on the day of the event.

Prairie du Chien Police Chief Kyle Treynor, speaking on stage as one of the pre-programming speakers during Trump’s visit, told ABC News that the Secret Service advised him to bill campaign expenses if he sought a refund because the service did not provide refunds. to the local police department for these expenses.

Treynor said police chiefs of other cities in Wisconsin’s Southwest region that similarly hosted Trump events also told him they had not received reimbursement from the campaign.

“So I have no expectation of getting paid either. So we’ll bill them and hope they do the right thing and pay. If they don’t, we’ll look at options at that point,” he said.

Mayor Hemmer said $17,000 “won’t bankrupt us” but it’s “not a small amount” for Prairie du Chien.

“Honestly, I don’t expect to get a 100% refund, but I would be happy to get a 50% refund. I think that would probably make a difference,” Hemmer said.

“And a couple of local residents called, saying this, demanding this: ‘I want to know how much this cost, and are we going to get a refund for this?’ “I don’t have an answer right now either way because I don’t know what the final cost is,” the mayor said.

Hemmer said candidates can campaign in Prairie du Chien, but it won’t be valid if they don’t pay their bills.

“He’s welcome here, but our bills and the expenses we incur by having him here have to be paid, otherwise we really don’t want him here,” Hemmer said. “And I would say, you know Trump or vice president Harris, it’s the same thing, because we’re a smaller city and if we incur those types of expenses, we expect to get reimbursed. Or, ‘Don’t show up.'”