Tucson shelters avoid street releases of asylum seekers — so far

Pima County has become “perilously close” to the release of asylum seekers on the streets without a clear destination since Title 42 ended last week, but a complex sheltering network and constant coordination have provided every migrant released to the county with a place to go, officials said Friday.

The number of migrants released from Border Patrol Custody to Pima County over the last 10 days has reached as high as 1,600, county Communications Director Mark Evans said, leading to “mornings where we were pretty sure we were going to have street releases.”

“Through some incredible efforts on behalf of everybody who’s been involved in this, we managed to avoid it,” Evans said during a call Friday with news organizations to update the local situation.

While the number of migrants in the shelter system has waned throughout the week, Pima County, the city of Tucson and Casa Alitas, the main provider of short-term shelter for migrants in the region, have been able to manage the number of people in their care that’s nearly tripled since the beginning of May.

The influx has come with the end of Title 42, the pandemic-era measure that allowed the federal government to expel some migrants from the country immediately that expired on May 11.

The increase of migrants entering Pima County actually occurred before May 11, Executive Director of Casa Alitas Teresa Cavendish explained, “so that they would not be subject to turn backs or be forced to go through the CBP One process, which is wildly behind on the number of folks that they’re able to run through that system.” CBP One is a mobile application the Department of Homeland Security is asking migrants to use to schedule asylum applications.

Casa Alitas receives people released by Border Patrol at its shelter on West Drexel Road, but the shelter itself has room for about 300 single men. Families units and other asylum seekers are sent to the Casa Alitas Welcome Center, which has about 39 private and congregate rooms to shelter family units.

Cavendish said the trends in the demographics of asylum seekers are “changing rapidly.” Two weeks ago, the shelters saw predominantly single men from India, Ecuador and countries in Africa. Now, about 73% of those in the shelters are family units from Latin American countries, according to Cavendish.

Tucson provides hotel rooms for asylum seekers as Casa Alitas runs out of space. The city has more than 100 hotel rooms dedicated to sheltering migrants but also has contracts with other hotel chains to provide rooms as needed, and they often are.

But there’s not a definitive number of people entering the shelter system that would trigger street releases, officials said at the news conference. Rather, capacity is a “fungible number,” Evans said, as “whenever we think we’re going to exceed capacity, the miracle workers kick in and manage to find one more bed and we’ve avoided it.”

Lane Mandle, chief of staff for the city manager, said when Casa Alitas and the two hotels designated for migrants are full, she calls other hotels Tucson’s contracted with to figure out how many rooms are available after other reservations booking up rooms on a given night. Mandle’s found rooms “with as little as 45 minutes’ notice sometimes,” she said, but the entire operation is “really done on the backs of other people.”

Casa Alitas has about 40 volunteers staffing its shelters daily, Cavendish said, but “frankly, we need more.”

Pima County and Tucson have stepped in to provide staff, but there’s no local government department dedicated to asylum seekers’ needs and the complex social skills that come with providing care.

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Mandle said she sends out calls to city staff and takes what she can get, but bringing in employees to address shelter needs is not a sustainable solution.

“It’s no big deal to borrow some staff from housing or transportation or water for a couple of days,” she said. “Normally, this is a three, four-day thing, but I can’t do it for weeks. And we’re over a week now.”

The migrant sheltering network expects some relief as more shelter sites open in Maricopa County. Some humanitarian organizations in the Phoenix area have taken in migrants from Pima County, but the sites also struggle with capacity. It’s unclear when more shelters will open.

It’s also unclear how long the increased number of migrants coming through the southwest border will last and how long the local shelter system can manage operations.

“We can do this as long as there’s the will to do it,” Evans said. “I don’t think, after four years of this, (local migrant aid providers) are in the mood to give up quite yet. But the key to all of this is the funding.”

The county’s received nearly $29.5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program to provide aid to asylum seekers and passes the money through to Tucson. The county estimates it currently has enough money to provide aid through September.

“It is unfortunate that due to the overall lack of federal leadership on this issue that local and regional leaders have had to step up to find the solution,” said Andy Squire, the Public Information for the Tucson City Manager’s Office. “Casa Alitas has a strong network up in the Phoenix metro area that’s assisting as well to try to provide some relief. If we’re to continue down this path, we need more. This is unsustainable for our region long term.”

Even though that sustained increase in migrants did not happen, U.S. Border Patrol agents have been releasing asylum seekers into small communities along Arizona’s border with Mexico for more than a week, the Arizona Republic reported this week.

These communities are located next to Border Patrol stations where agents take in and process migrants. Border agents have been releasing an average of 150 asylum seekers in Douglas each day. In Bisbee, it is about 120 people daily, the Republic said.

Since these small communities lack the infrastructure to house or transport asylum seekers, on May 8 state government under Gov. Katie Hobbs stepped up to pay for charter buses to transport them from the border to Tucson and Phoenix, the two main transportation hubs in Arizona. There, asylum seekers can take buses or airplanes to destinations elsewhere in the United States.

The Department of Emergency and Military Affairs is also continuing to bus asylum seekers from Arizona to nonprofits in Washington. The state government began those efforts last May under Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. But his successor, Democratic Gov. Hobbs has continued that program.

Since May 2022, the state government has paid for 113 charter buses transporting 4,155 people to Washington as of Tuesday. Of that total, the state has sent 25 buses with 1,077 asylum seekers in 2023, the Republic reported.