Pima County has a long history of offering sanctuary to migrants and providing aid to families seeking asylum from all over the world. But as federal funding dwindles, these programs are at risk.
County officials say they will stop providing shelter to asylum-seekers, ending a program that has aided more than 400,000 people over the past five years. At Tuesday’s Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting, County Administrator Jan Lesher said federal funding for the program is set to run out by March 31 and that they could not afford to take on the cost locally.
“We’ve indicated that we would fund this uniquely federal program as long as there were federal dollars to do so,” Lesher said. “And we have always said that this was not a responsibility of the general fund.”
Since 2019, the county has partnered with Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona to provide shelter, transportation, food and medical care to asylum-seekers. These individuals and family members are legally processed at the U.S. border and are brought to the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in Tucson for typically about 48 hours before moving on to parts of the country where they have family or sponsors. Up until now, the program has been fully funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The number of people seeking asylum in the county has fluctuated drastically week over week. The county saw a record number of arrivals the second week of December with 10,200, but that number dropped to 4,700 by the start of January.
Pima County is currently seeing an average of 1,000 asylum-seekers a day, with about half coming from Santa Cruz and Cochise counties. At these rates, Lesher said she estimates the county would need to spend up to $60 million a year to maintain operations. It’s unclear exactly how much federal money has been poured into the program, but Lesher said funding often comes intermittently, a month or two at a time.
“It is severely frustrating and disappointing that we are in this situation,” Lesher wrote in a Feb. 16 memo to the board. “This is a crisis of the federal government’s making due to the failure to pass sensible border and immigration reform and to provide the necessary funding to local jurisdictions forced to deal with the deleterious effects of federal border policy.”
As the county prepares to shutter the program, Lesher said the biggest concern is preparing for an influx of people seeking asylum who have nowhere to go. In previous years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has dropped migrant families at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Tucson, but the partnership between Pima County and Catholic Community Services helped limit that from happening.
According to Lesher, Casa Alitas is expecting to only be able to support up to 100 people a day without federal funding.
“That means there could be as many as 400 people a day released onto the streets of Tucson beginning as soon as April 1,” she said.
Lesher offered two contingency plans — one proposal would have utilized a former jail facility to shelter asylum seekers and another would use the Pima County Motorsports Complex to establish an outdoor facility. She did not recommend moving forward with either of those plans, however.
“My recommendation is to not fund any of the options presented in the contingency respite site plans,” Lesher said. “We have done all we can for five years with nearly a dozen county departments having been involved in the management of the complex sheltering coalition.”
Despite the likelihood of street releases, Democratic Supervisor Adelita Grijalva agreed that the program could not continue without federal support.
“I think Pima County stepped up and has done a really tremendous job in keeping our community safe and providing a pathway for legal asylum-seekers to get to their final destination,” she said. “But I don’t believe that Pima County should be using our county resources that we desperately need for county programs to fund federal programs.”
Supervisor Steve Christy, the only Republican on the board, blamed the board’s Democratic majority for their position, saying the county never should have agreed to take federal money in the first place.
“If we had been so concerned about street releases as the motivating factor for why we went into the asylum-seeking business, why would we spread the word to the world that you can come to Pima County and you will be taken care of,” he said.
The board of supervisors also heard from several community members who oppose the sheltering of asylum-seekers throughout the county, calling it an “illegal invasion.” All of the migrants who have come through Pima County’s program have been processed by federal agencies and are pursuing their legal right to seek asylum within the country.
Pima County officials have warned for months that the expiration of federal funds was coming, but some were hoping for national leaders to take action before then. On Feb. 4, a sweeping 400-page immigration bill was presented by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, and included $1 billion for the Supplemental Shelter Program. The bill failed to pass the chamber. Border security and migration issues are expected to be a key issue among Arizona voters in both the presidential election and U.S. Senate race.
“This entire region is going to be incredibly affected by a failure of federal leadership. And I sincerely hope that that is something that they are all taking into consideration between now and March 31,” District 1 Supervisor Rex Scott said. “We shouldn’t have to be in this position. We have a five-year record that we can point to with pride in terms of not only what we’ve been able to do, but what we’ve been able to prevent.”
Moving forward, the board of supervisors said they will draft a joint letter to the Southern Arizona congressional delegation detailing why the program is closing and what the impact will be. This includes Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva and Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani.
Grijalva also said the board should figure out how they can support the city of Tucson as they prepare for people seeking asylum no longer having shelter in the coming months. City leaders are expected to discuss the issue during their meetings this week.
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