Another $2.75 million will be spent to cover the cost of asylum seekers who need additional medical care to fight the spread of COVID-19, under a plan approved Tuesday by the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
The funding to mitigate the spread of the virus by allocating money to house affected asylum seekers has now grown to nearly $20 million. Supervisor Steve Christy was the only no vote.
Most of the funding has been federal, but the $2.75 million approved Tuesday comes from the Immigrant Emergency Care and Testing Grant, according to the contract amendment. This a new source of funds from Arizona’s Department of Health Services, according to Jan Lesher, the county administrator.
Using state money is “partly because” the county is drawing down its federal funds so rapidly, District 1 Supervisor Rex Scott confirmed with Lesher during Tuesday’s meeting.
Scott said Tuesday he won’t support such expenses in the future if the federal government won’t assist in the county’s effort handling the influx of asylum seekers.
“I have consistently voted for us to make use of federal funds that are provided to border counties to deal with the ramifications of federal immigration policy in terms of the shelter-and-care of legally processed asylum seekers, and I will continue to do that because the federal government should be making sure that border counties, such as ours, are not expending our own funds. But, if at the end of February if those funds run out, I want to say to my colleagues and county administration, I will not vote to use general fund monies to pay for the consequences of federal immigration policy,” Scott said Tuesday.
“I will not vote to use general fund monies for purposes the federal government should be supporting … because it is not something we should be asking local taxpayers to take on,” Scott said, citing concerns about the potential street releases and concerns raised by constituents.
In September 2021, the county began with a $2 million contract with Jot Properties, LLC., which owns a Red Roof Inn located near Tucson International Airport and Comfort Suites Airport. Qualifying asylum seekers were housed through the use federal funds, the Star previously reported.
Through various amendments, the amount awarded to the contract now sits at $19.4 million. Tuesday’s amendment extends the contract to June 18.
The county says releases of asylum seekers from Casa Alitas remains high, tallying 9,525 releases to the center from Dec. 21 to Dec. 27. That’s an average of about 1,361 releases per day.
Those numbers are up from the previous week’s total of 9,466 releases, as well as the four weeks prior to that, according to the Southwest Border Executive Situational report presented Tuesday to the Board.
From Sept. 13 to Dec. 20, about 45,000 single adults and family members have been released in Nogales and almost 4,600 in Douglas and Naco, the county says. About 60% of the released asylum seekers were part of a family, the report said.
Most asylum seekers released to shelters in Tucson only stay a night or two before moving on. But the month of an unrelenting flow of arrivals has pushed the county to previously warn of possible unsheltered street releases of asylum seekers, the star has reported.
Border agents in the Tucson sector encountered 64,638 migrants in November, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s more than the record-setting 55,226 migrant encounters the sector reported in October, the start of the federal fiscal year. Across the southwestern border, CBP says it encountered 191,113 migrants in November, compared to 188,780 the previous month.
