No funds from Pima County will be used to continue the operation of programs for asylum seekers once federal funding runs out at the end of March, supervisors said Tuesday.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors will send a letter to members of the southern Arizona delegation informing them that such programs and services will not continue with county funds, Chairwoman Adelita Grijalva said Tuesday. She said she hopes leaders from jurisdictions across the county and those in Cochise and Santa Cruz counties will also sign the letter.
“I think we should send a joint letter, possibly with the cities that are going to be impacted and the chairs from Cochise and Santa Cruz counties to let our southern Arizona delegation know of what the impact is going to be ... I don’t believe Pima County should be using our county resources that we desperately need for our county programs to fund federal programs.”
Federal funding for programs and services that help asylum seekers here, like the Casa Alitas shelter, is set to end March 31, Jan Lesher, the county administrator said at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Since April of 2019, when we began to assist with the issue related to legal asylum seekers, we’ve indicated that we would fund this uniquely federal program as long as there were federal dollars to do so,” Lesher said Tuesday. “At this point, we do not see another funding opportunity ... it just appears the dollars are coming to an end.”
In a Feb. 16 memo to the board, Lesher said the chance federal funds will come he before the end of March was “negligible, if not zero,” and that as many as 400 people a day could be released by the Border Patrol here.
“ We shouldn’t have to be in this position, and we have a five-year record 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,” said Scott, who has previously said he would not support using the programs without federal money.
Supervisor Steve Christy, a Republican, said it was important to acknowledge that the board’s current Democratic majority, as well as the previous board, “couldn’t wait to get their hands on federal money.”
“If we had been so concerned about street releases as the motivating factor as to why we went into the asylum-seeking business,” then why is the county “enabling the whole process,” Christy said. “The federal problem didn’t shove this money down our throat, we took it, and now we’re paying the price.”
