After an unprecedented effort to stave off unsheltered street releases of newly arrived migrants in Tucson, the nonprofit Casa Alitas and its local partners are now facing a reckoning.
At the end of March, the federal funding that has supported Pima Countyβs migrant-aid effort will be exhausted.
With no additional funds in sight, county officials say by April, Casa Alitas shelters will have dozens of layoffs and Tucsonans will begin seeing Border Patrol agents releasing hundreds of legally processed migrants each day onto the streets, with little to no support services.
βWhat we are about to experience with street releases is homelessness on steroids,β Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher wrote in a memo to the Board of Supervisors late Friday afternoon.
Inaction in the U.S. Congress means the chance of renewed federal funding before April is βnegligible, if not zero,β Lesher wrote. So county officials are starting to wind down Pima Countyβs critical role in the local migrant-aid effort, including logistical coordination, contracts management and the administration of funding reimbursement for contracted agencies, like the nonprofit Catholic Community Services, which oversees the Casa Alitas program, she said.
Catholic Community Servicesβ shelters will lose 30 staff positions, the memo said.
The number of unsheltered releases will depend on the pace of migrant arrivals in the region but at current volumes, Tucson could see up to 400 people released by Border Patrol each day.
Pima County is analyzing possible ways to use the countyβs general funds to help mitigate the fall-out, Lesher said in the memo.
βBut every dollar spent helping legally processed asylum seekers move on to their destination cities will be a dollar we canβt spend on county residents who are struggling financially to afford adequate housing, or who are suffering from mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction,β she said.
The Senateβs failed bipartisan border-security package, co-sponsored by Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona, would have appropriated $1.4 billion to support temporary shelter for migrants and related support services throughout the country. GOP legislators called the long-awaited legislation βdead on arrivalβ within hours of its release, and the Senate voted to kill the bill a few days later.
βIt is severely frustrating and disappointing that we are in this situation,β Lesher said. βThis is a crisis of the federal governmentβs 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.β
βKeeps me awake at nightβ
Even before Fridayβs notice from Lesher, local religious leaders have been working on contingency plans in case federal support didnβt come through, and contemplating the consequences for vulnerable migrants arriving here.
βItβs the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night,β Bishop of Tucson Edward Weisenburger said earlier this month. Weisenburger oversees Catholic-affiliated programs within the Diocese of Tucson to ensure they are fulfilling their religious mission.
For Weisenburger, Casa Alitasβ migrant-aid effort, through Catholic Community Services, is an embodiment of the Gospel. Heβs been moved to witness the gratitude of the migrant families, who often arrive at Casa Alitas having walked through the soles of their shoes, he said.
Itβs particularly emotional to see the sheer joy on the faces of children, who arrive with no possessions, to receive a small toy from volunteers at Casa Alitas, he said.
βIt flows from Matthewβs Gospel, where he says, βWhat you do to the least of these little ones, you do to me,ββ he said. βI think itβs one of the areas where Jesus is speaking profoundly, directly and literally.β
In recent weeks, Border Patrol has been releasing about 1,000 migrants per day in the Tucson sector, about half of them in Pima County and half in Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.
Pima Countyβs migrant-aid relief effort now costs $1 million to $1.4 million per week, county officials say.
Without the assurance of more federal support, βwe have contracts that are going to start expiring and we canβt in good conscience extend those contracts without knowing thereβs going to be funding there,β said Pima County spokesman Mark Evans.
Catholic Community Services, or CCS, intends to continue their mission of helping refugees and asylum seekers, but using donor funds alone, the agency could likely only cover services for about 100 migrants per day, Lesher said in the memo.
βCCS is still developing its operational and funding plan for April 1 onward,β Lesher wrote to supervisors. βI will have more details for you on that soon, including the possibility of continuing to rent county facilities to CCS.β
Lesherβs memo described two possible contingency plans to assist arriving migrants, ranging from a monthly cost of $126,000 to offer the βbare necessities,β to more than $1 million per month for a more robust offerings, including support staff and food.
But Lesherβs recommendation was that the county not fund any of the options β even though she acknowledged Tucson local governments would still likely face costs related to increased homelessness.
βI believe it would be imprudent for the taxpayers of Pima County to also have to absorb the cost of providing even this minimal amount of sheltering as described above, as this is a federal problem that requires federal funding,β she said.
Coordinated effort
Since 2019, the Tucson regionβs migrant-aid coalition has been allocated $65 million in mostly federal funding to temporarily shelter more than 400,000 legally processed migrants who have passed through here.
βThe countyβs objective, since it agreed to assist the sheltering effort in 2019, has been to protect Tucson and the county from having hundreds of people with limited resources and English-language skills released onto city streets every day,β Lesher said. βCounty and city participation in this effort has prevented a humanitarian crisis from occurring daily.β
Border Patrol agents release migrants to Casa Alitasβ care or into border communities, after they are finger-printed, given facial scans and background checks, and had their belongings inspected.
Thanks to dozens of state-contracted buses, those released in small border communities β like Nogales, Bisbee and Douglas β have been transported quickly to Tucson, where thereβs shelter and transportation infrastructure allowing migrants to rest, get medical attention and other supports before traveling to family or sponsors in the interior of the U.S., usually within one or two days.
Without that assistance, hundreds of migrants a day will be left unsheltered in border towns where thereβs little infrastructure to house them, said Sobeira Castro, director of emergency management for Santa Cruz County.
Migrants arrive without food, without ways to charge their cell phones, if they have them, and with inadequate clothing for cold weather, she said. Especially in the winter months, many who arrive are dealing with illness, too.
βWithout Pima County and Casa Alitasβ assistance, we would not be able to help these migrants. They would be basically unsheltered within the community and left on their own, without any guidance,β Castro said.
In preparation for the loss of Pima Countyβs support, Castro said her team has been developing posters in three languages that theyβll post in public spaces, with information on the cityβs limited resources and maps to help migrants orient themselves.
βSome of them donβt even know exactly where they areβ when border agents drop them off, she said.
Overcoming challenges
Casa Alitas director Diego PiΓ±a Lopez started at Casa Alitas as an intern in 2015. Heβs watched the program expand from a five-bedroom house, to operating out of the Benedictine Monastery in 2019, before expanding operations to the βWelcome Centerβ on Ajo Way and the Drexel Center, which it leases from Pima County, to meet surging demand. The agency also utilizes space in local hotels, through local government contracts, to help with overflow capacity.
βI think weβve learned a lot in the last 1.5 years of (higher) flows and adapting,β PiΓ±a Lopez said.
Long-time volunteer Debbie Bachel, 67, said sheβs been amazed by Casa Alitasβ ability to adjust to the increased pace of arrivals.
βAfter the pandemic, when weβd see 100 people a day, we thought, βOh my goodness, how are we going to do it?ββ she said. βNow weβre up to 1,000 to 1,300 (per day,) and we can do it.β
Bachel said the camaraderie between volunteers and staff, as well as PiΓ±a Lopezβs leadership, drive that success.
βItβs like a family,β she said. βIβve worked with several charities, but Iβve never felt as much as I do with Casa Alitas like Iβm a team member.β
Some volunteers at Casa Alitas say they feel a personal connection to the new arrivals.
As a second-generation American, Iris Weisman, 70, said she chose to volunteer with asylum seekers out of gratitude for those who helped her grandparents when they arrived in the U.S. from Belarus and Russia.
βIt was very personal to me,β Weisman said. Her grandmother fled Russia alone at age 14, arriving at Ellis Island in New York speaking no English, with nothing but a piece of paper with her brotherβs address written on it, she said.
When no one had come to pick her up by midnight, a security guard pinned the address to her coat and put her on a bus, asking the driver to make sure she got off at the right stop to find her brotherβs home, which she did, Weisman said.
βWhen I think about that, this is time for me to give back, in a way,β she said. βTo be like that security guard and help people who are also escaping terrible lives, and who need just a little help to get from here to where theyβre planning on going.β
One of Casa Alitaβs newest helpers, 18-year-old Chris Amanat, said he was inspired by his own family history when he chose Casa Alitas for his senior-year internship through BASIS Tucson North charter high school.
Amanat is fluent in French and Mandarin, and his skills have been an asset as heβs helped do intake for an increasingly diverse group of people arriving at Casa Alitas, including many from the African country of Mauritania, where French is spoken.
Hearing asylum seekersβ stories of their homeland, and the circumstances they left behind, strikes a chord with Amanat, who is the child of immigrants, too: His fatherβs family moved from Iran to St. Louis when his father was an infant, and his motherβs family immigrated from China.
βIβve grown up with those stories throughout my childhood,β he said. βItβs been very meaningful to meet people on their first steps. β¦ I try to be very welcoming. They remind me of what my family must have faced when they first came here.β
Harassment continues
On top of the funding uncertainty, Casa Alitas staff and volunteers are also facing an escalation in hostility often rooted in falsehoods, fueled by right-wing media personalities who have wracked up millions of views on their social media posts making false accusations about the migrant-aid effort in Tucson and elsewhere.
About 98% of Casa Alitasβ guests pay for their own transportation to reach family or sponsors in the interior of the U.S., PiΓ±a Lopez said, despite false claims spread widely β including by Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb β that migrants are receiving generous Visa cards, phones and plane tickets to wherever they want.
For two weeks, Lamb, a Republican running for Kyrsten Sinemaβs U.S. Senate seat, has not responded to the Arizona Daily Starβs requests for comment on his false assertions about non-governmental organizations, including that migrants receive $5,000 Visa cards.
Casa Alitas and Catholic Community Services have increasingly become the target of right-wing ire and conspiracy theories. Social media personalities have been showing up with video cameras unannounced at Casa Alitas shelters and demanding access, while falsely accusing staff, volunteers and local law enforcement of participating in, or refusing to investigate, βhuman trafficking.β
The targeted harassment has ramped up since January, when right-wing media personality James OβKeefe shared multiple videos filled with false claims about Casa Alitas. In one video with nearly 3 million views, he claimed the Casa Alitasβ Drexel Center was a βsecretβ facility that βnone of the American people knew about until now.β
βThatβs just absurd,β said Evans of Pima County. βTheyβre only secret to people who donβt know how to use Google.β
The Drexel Centerβs purchase, and Casa Alitasβ work generally, have been covered by local, state, national and even international news outlets. Pima Countyβs Board of Supervisors publicly debates and votes to approve funding for the programs, as the Star and other outlets have routinely reported.
βJust a month or so ago, I did an interview with the Financial Times of London,β Evans said. βWeβve been completely open and transparent about what weβre doing here and why weβre doing it. Weβre trying to protect the community from the deleterious effects of what would happen if hundreds of people a day were being released (without shelter) in Tucson.β
Casa Alitas has also given tours to Arizonaβs Congressional delegation, including Reps. Juan Ciscomani, Ruben Gallego and RaΓΊl Grijalva, and Sens. Mark Kelly and Sinema, as well as Gov. Katie Hobbs, Evans said.
But two conservative legislators are now the latest to have shown up at Casa Alitas facilities, unannounced and with a camera running.
While in Arizona for a committee hearing in early February, Reps. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, and Doug LaMalfa, R-California, filmed their own attempt to enter a Tucson hotel where Casa Alitas shelters migrants when its other facilities are full.
The day before, OβKeefe had posted a video of himself in costume, with a secret camera, at the same hotel, in a video that garnered 4.4 million views.
Tiffanyβs office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. He and LaMalfa shared a video of their visit on βX,β formerly Twitter, falsely claiming that OβKeefe had βexposedβ that the hotel was βhousing illegals.β
Tiffanyβs Feb. 9 post now has more than 2 million views and nearly 3,000 comments underneath, including from Elon Musk.
Casa Alitas staff had been told to call police if strangers showed up demanding access, Evans said, and thatβs what they did when the unfamiliar legislators showed up last week.
βThey were rightly skeptical of who was there,β he said. βThey were anxious and spooked from the secret videos of them posted on Internet, and the Internet harassment they were experiencing from the day before,β when OβKeefe posted his video.
In a Wednesday interview, Rep. LaMalfa told the Star that as legislators, he and Tiffany should have been allowed to inspect the facility and conduct interviews, whether or not theyβd given notice.
βWe showed ID,β he said. βWe wanted to see exactly how theyβre running their operation there. When they would not even talk to us, thatβs what was concerning. They wonβt tell us what theyβre doing.β
LaMalfa falsely claimed to the Star that Casa Alitas was harboring βillegals.β All migrants housed at Casa Alitas have been processed and released by Border Patrol. Once they are released by Border Patrol, with a notice-to-appear for a court hearing, they are present in the country legally.
LaMalfa said nongovernmental organizations βreally donβt seem to have accountability.β
βTheyβre getting a lot of money pushed at them to (shelter) people here that really donβt have any place here,β he said. βIt isnβt unreasonable for members of Congress, who are in charge of appropriating the money to do that, to be able to look at how the processes are working and what theyβre dealing with.β
Evans, and Casa Alitas director PiΓ±a Lopez, said the legislators would have been welcomed if anyone had known they were coming.
βIf Rep. Tiffany had reached out to CCS or reached out to the county, we absolutely would have accommodated him and arranged for a tour for him to see what weβre doing and the successes in protecting the community,β Evans said. βBut we werenβt given that opportunity. He just showed up. So he got rejected and took to the Internet to complain about it.β
βLove conquers fearβ
For decades, U.S. legislators have failed to enact comprehensive reform to allow the U.S. immigration and asylum systems to cope with theΒ new reality at the border, where most are turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents to request asylum and increasingly, families are arriving from diverse parts of the world.
In the Tucson sector, more than half of the 250,000 migrant apprehensions between ports of entry in fiscal year 2024, which began in October, have been members of families or unaccompanied children, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Bishop Weisenburger said, from the Christian perspective, centering the humanity of the most vulnerable among us is crucial in making moral policy decisions.
βHow easy it is that we vilify immigrants,β he said. βBut these are human beings. If you speak of immigration in the abstract, itβs easy to make decisions. But if you go down and talk to someone whose relatives have been murdered, whose child finally died from hunger, youβll come to some different conclusions.β
Even as social-media personalities seek to exploit anxiety about immigration, Weisenburger counsels avoidance of fear-based reactions.
Fear is a natural human emotion, but it should not be the main driver behind decisions, Weisenburger said, referencing a message from the Gospel of John: βFear always takes us where we do not want to go,β he said. βPerfect love casts out all fear.β
βThe scriptures are one long story of every time we give in to fear, we make pretty bad decisions,β he said. βIf we allow love to come to life within us, we make much better decisions. And then, we work together and we actually fix some of these problems, and we make the world a better place.β