Pima County supervisors OK raises for jail workers, shelter for asylum seekers

Pima County corrections officers are getting a pay hike and asylum seekers will have a new roof over their heads thanks to recent decisions by county lawmakers.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a 7.5% raise for corrections officers and sergeants at the board’s Dec. 20 meeting.

Officers who now make $22.58 an hour will be bumped up to $24.27. Sergeants, who make $29.25 an hour, will receive $31.44. The raises, which will cost county taxpayers $1.7 million a year, take effect Jan. 1.

Sheriff Chris Nanos said the increase was necessary to attract new jail personnel and keep those now on staff from seeking higher-paying jobs in other Arizona counties.

At the same meeting, the board also approved spending $330,000 for a six-month lease on a new shelter to house an expected influx of asylum seekers transiting through the Tucson.

The 62,000-square-foot building on West Drexel Road west of Interstate 19 could accommodate up to 400 asylum seekers at a time. The travelers end up in the Tucson area because that’s where they are dropped off by Department of Homeland Security personnel, county officials said. The former office building can be converted into a shelter in about 60 days, officials said.

A county news release noted asylum seekers are in the U.S. legally and are allowed to stay while they await their asylum hearings. They typically spend a few days in Pima County before moving on to live with relatives or sponsors in other parts of the country as they await their hearing dates.

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The issue isn’t a new one, the news release said, noting in the last four months more than 33,000 asylum seekers were dropped off in the Tucson area. But the number of arrivals is expected to swell if the federal government drops a disease prevention measure that kept many out of the country during the COVID pandemic.

Catholic Community Services operates the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in a building leased from the county to house asylum seekers. The county and city also contract with several hotels to provide needed rooms to those immigrants coming through Tucson. The county will contract with CCS to operate the new shelter on Drexel Road.

The city, the county and charities that provide aid “are concerned DHS will release more asylum seekers in one day than there are shelter beds to accommodate them, creating a humanitarian crisis with people left to find shelter on city streets,” the news release said.

Board of Supervisors Chair Sharon Bronson called the situation “sad and frustrating.”

“After four years of this crisis, the Congress and successive presidential administrations have done nothing to solve it and have continued to force local communities all along the border to carry the incredible burden of sheltering hundreds of thousands of people released into our communities by the federal government,” Bronson said in the news release. “This is a federal problem and it requires a federal solution. We shouldn’t be in the asylum seeker sheltering business.”