U.S. migrant-aid funds expected to last Pima County through 2024

Incoming federal funding for Pima County’s regional migrant-aid effort is expected to last through the end of the year, but that will depend on the volume of border-crossers arriving here in the coming months, county officials said Friday.

The county will receive $21.8 million of the $640.9 million in federal Shelter and Services Program funding approved by the U.S. Congress last month. That money will allow the migrant-aid agencies that contract with the county to continue assisting legally processed migrants released by border agents in Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.

Tucson nonprofit Casa Alitas, the migrant-aid program of Catholic Community Services, plans to reverse previously announced layoffs, and may even hire more staff, said Casa Alitas director Diego Piña Lopez on Friday.

The nonprofit is continuing to analyze how to cut costs and stretch out the federal funding for as long as possible, he said.

“We’re going through everything to make sure we’re good stewards with the money, as we always try to be,” he said.

News of the additional funding allocation, detailed in a Friday announcement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, first came in late March, days before Pima County’s existing federal funding was set to run out on April 1.

The new funds will retroactively reimburse the county and its coalition partners for funds spent since March 31 and will allow the region to avoid unsheltered street releases of migrants, whom advocates say would struggle to make their way out of Tucson and small border communities without a basic level of assistance.

County Administrator Jan Lesher had warned of “homelessness on steroids“ in Tucson if the county no longer had federal funding for its coordination of the region’s migrant-aid effort, including providing temporary shelter, clothing, food, showers and access to WiFi to purchase plane tickets to migrants’ final destinations.

Between 97% and 98% of migrant arrivals pay for their own travel, after staying one or two nights at Casa Alitas before joining family or sponsors in the interior of the country, officials say.

Arizona communities, including Yuma and Maricopa counties, got a total of nearly $55 million under the new SSP allocation, according to DHS.

“This funding gives us the breathing room to work towards a better solution that, at the very least, will relieve local governments of the burden of mitigating the effects of federal border control and immigration policy,” Pima County Board of Supervisors Chair Adelita Grijalva said.

The region’s migrant-aid coalition has aided more than 430,000 legally processed migrants since the coalition formed in 2019, using $77 million in federal funding.

Migrant arrivals lower

Migrants who entered the U.S. between ports of entry and surrender to border agents can be released by Border Patrol into U.S. communities after they are screened and given a notice to appear in court.

Large numbers of migrants who entered the U.S. between ports of entry — usually after paying human smugglers aligned with criminal organizations — have been immediately turning themselves in to Border Patrol to request asylum, overwhelming agents and limiting their ability to apprehend those seeking to evade law enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection says.

More than half of the 300,000 migrants that Tucson sector border agents apprehended between October and February were members of family groups or unaccompanied minors, data from CBP show.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Advocates say many asylum seekers would prefer a safer, more orderly means of seeking asylum, but there aren’t enough legitimate avenues to do so at the nation’s ports of entry, some of which don’t accept asylum requests or have strict limits on the number of asylum-seekers processed each day.

Asylum seekers wait for months in dangerous conditions south of the U.S. border, vulnerable to kidnapping and other abuses by criminal groups, Mexican immigration officials and law enforcement, human rights advocates say.

The legal U.S. immigration system hasn’t been significantly updated since 1990, despite the U.S. labor market’s need for foreign workers, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council.

“I look forward to Congress working on permanent solutions, including comprehensive immigration reform, so we can realize the benefits of lawful cross-border trade and travel,” Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said in a Friday statement.

At the end of last year, Casa Alitas was receiving record numbers of migrants, up to 1,800 arrivals each day, at a cost of more then $1 million per week. At that rate, the new SSP funding allocation would last through August, Piña Lopez said.

But while January and February averaged about 950 arrivals daily at Casa Alitas, for the past month migrant-arrival numbers have been closer to 300 to 600 daily, so costs are much lower, Piña Lopez said.

The dip in migrant arrivals could be due, at least in part, to the Mexican government’s ongoing efforts to reduce the number of migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, Piña Lopez said.

Mexico’s efforts to slow migrants’ progress through the country, under pressure from U.S. officials, has raised human-rights concerns among advocates in Mexico and the U.S. about the targeting of migrants in Mexico, and rising reports of violence, extortion and other abuses.

The unpredictability is a big challenge for Pima County’s contracted vendors, who have to scale up their services and staffing rapidly, and scale down again, as migrant-arrival volumes rise and fall, said county spokesman Mark Evans.

“That’s part of the cost with doing this,” Evans said.

SSP funding comes with more restrictions and reporting requirements than previous funding, Piña Lopez said. Some items not covered under SSP funding — such as diapers, baby powder and baby formula — could be covered by donations, which are still critical to helping Casa Alitas, he said.

“We had to be very precise with our calculations. We had to get really close to the exact amount (to be spent), which is very challenging when you don’t know how many babies you’re going to get coming through your shelter. You don’t know cultures that are coming through with dietary restrictions,” Piña Lopez said. “So the challenges of acquiring some of these resources is pretty tricky, because we never know who we’re getting tomorrow.”

Pima County is the fiscal agent for the federal funding of the migrant-aid program, and the county also does logistical coordination and contracting with agencies and vendors. No local funding is used to pay for sheltering services, county officials said Friday. The state’s border security and health assistance funds pay for long-distance transportation and medical screenings for migrants, and the state also covered half the purchase of the 650-person capacity Drexel Center, officials said.

Southern Arizona’s congressional delegation and Gov. Katie Hobbs pushed hard for border communities to get these funds, Pima County’s Evans said.

“We believe it’s an acknowledgment by the federal government that Arizona, and especially the Tucson sector, has been the most active and the most impacted by the issue of border crossings over the last year,” he said. “It’s an acknowledgment of the benefit of this program, and that it should keep going.”