The mayor of Washington, D.C., says Arizona Gov. Doug Duceyβs migrant busing program is overwhelming migrant services in the nationβs capital.
In a recent TV appearance on CBSβ βFace the Nation,β Mayor Muriel Bowser said migrants being bused from Arizona and Texas are filling up D.C. homeless shelters, and that migrants are being tricked into getting on the buses to D.C. when their final destinations are all over the country.
βThe only trick thatβs being played on asylum seekers comes from the Biden Administration, which with their open border policy, has sent every possible signal to migrants to βhead north,ββ Ducey tweeted in response.
Ducey, following Texasβ example, began the program on May 9, busing migrants who crossed the border in Yuma and volunteered to go to D.C.
βWe are being forced to operate as a border town,β said Abel NuΓ±ez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, or CARECEN, the nonprofit organization in D.C. that meets the migrants and assists them in getting to their final destinations.
While the majority of migrants arriving in D.C. are not staying there but traveling to other parts of the East Coast, those who do decide to stay will probably go to a homeless shelter, NuΓ±ez said.
βFor the few people that stay, whether from Texas or Arizona, we run into the same problem that every major metropolitan area has β there is no housing,β he said. βSo unfortunately, if we have people from the Arizona bus that want to stay in D.C., for whatever reason, then we have no housing for them.β
CARECEN is not set up to help thousands of migrants who just arrived in the country. Before the busing from Texas and Arizona started, the nonprofit was mainly an immigration legal clinic and housing program for migrants who typically had already assimilated to life in the U.S.
Arizona has sent more than 1,000 migrants to D.C. since May and continues to send three buses a week. Texas has voluntarily bused more than 6,000 migrants to D.C. since mid-April, according to the Associated Press.
Busing called unsustainable
Migrants who entered the U.S. in Yuma and are traveling to sponsors on the East Coast have the option of volunteering for Duceyβs busing program.
Once they reach D.C. they have been met by people with CARECEN, which doesnβt designate what state they arrived from.
CARECEN doesnβt have a respite center, like the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in Tucson, which has infrastructure and federal funding to house migrants for a short time.
The D.C. nonprofit is mainly helping the migrants get to their final destinations, which means buying same-day plane tickets as well as hotel stays for those who canβt arrange same-day travel.
CARECEN has already spent nearly $200,000 in the last two-and-a-half months, and NuΓ±ez says other nonprofits and church organizations that are helping with the effort have also spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars helping the migrants once they reach D.C.
Staff with CARECEN, a Washington DC non-profit, assist migrants arriving in DC from Arizona and Texas.
He says having community organizations handle those expenses is unsustainable.
Even though the mayor of D.C. is saying this is a federal issue, itβs becoming the mayorβs issue, he said.
βYou can scream at the top of your lungs that this is a federal issue, and I may agree with you, but it doesnβt change that in the end, this will be your issue,β he said.
βWhatβs going to happen when we get overwhelmed because we donβt have resources to receive them is what the governor of Texas and the governor of Arizona wanted β the chaos, people wandering on the streets.β
Arizona program more coordinated
Arizonaβs program is more coordinated and humane than Texasβ, NuΓ±ez said, but added that at least some of the migrants from Arizona are, in fact, ending their trip in a D.C. homeless shelter.
The Arizona busing program is being coordinated by the Regional Center for Border Health in Yuma, and is run by the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs.
It also contracts with private agency AMI, which has nurses and EMTs who travel with migrants on the buses to deal with any medical issues that may arise.
That is one difference between the two statesβ programs β buses from Arizona have a medical team while buses from Texas have a security detail, NuΓ±ez said.
As well, the Arizona buses supply the migrants with βreal food,β he said, while people on the Texas buses get dehydrated military operational rations. Also, the Regional Center for Border Health provides CARECEN with medical updates and a manifest about everyone on the bus.
The center has been working with the Border Patrol since last year to prevent migrant releases on the streets in Yuma, to provide COVID-19 testing and to assist migrant families to get to their final destination βin a more compassionate and humanitarian way,β said Amanda Aguirre, president and CEO of the center and a former Democratic state senator.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks during a news conference March 15, 2022, in Washington. Two Republican border-state governors who are investing billions of dollars on immigration enforcement and hours at the podium blasting the Biden administration policies have found two unlikely allies: Democratic mayors Bowser of Washington, D.C., and Eric Adams of New York. The mayorsβ recent overtures for federal aid is a response to Texas and Arizona busing migrants away from the border, a months-old practice that has been long on political theater and short on practical impact.
The Regional Center for Border Health runs 19 rural health clinics. They started providing services for migrants just entering the country at the beginning of 2021, including food, medical support, places to charge devices, Wi-Fi and hotels if travel cannot be arranged that day.
The number of migrants coming into the U.S. through the Border Patrolβs Yuma Sector has increased from a monthly average of 730 migrants in fiscal year 2020 to a more than 26,000 monthly average this fiscal year, mostly families who turn themselves over to Border Patrol and intend to apply for asylum.
The Regional Center for Border Health receives about 350 people a day from more than 140 countries. This includes people from South America, Haiti, Russia, Georgia, India, Romania and Africa.
Pima County is not using the busing program. Nonprofits in Tucson that assist migrants have received more than $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency since April of 2021 to cover migrant services including travel expenses.
But the center in Yuma, which does not have a shelter or the infrastructure to house migrants, only began receiving federal funding earlier this year for the services it has been providing to migrants since early 2021, so the busing program has been helpful for them. Aguirre said the federal dollars will reimburse it for the $3 million or so the center has spent from its budget.
The vast majority of migrants coming through Yuma are going to the East Coast, Aguirre said. And most have a sponsor theyβll travel to, which is usually a family member, but a few have arranged travel to a church or nonprofit organization.
The migrants who choose the D.C. bus option are the ones who are traveling to sponsors on the East Coast, Aguirre said. If they make that choice, they get on a roster, which is shared with CARECEN, and notify their loved ones when theyβll be arriving.
Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden, on July 1, 2022, in New York. Two Republican border-state governors who are investing billions of dollars on immigration enforcement and hours at the podium blasting the Biden administration policies have found two unlikely allies: Democratic mayors Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., and Eric Adams of New York. The mayors' recent overtures for federal aid is a response to Texas and Arizona busing migrants away from the border, a months-old practice that has been long on political theater and short on practical impact.
The center gets regular status updates on the trip, and Aguirre said 90% to 99% of the migrantsβ families are waiting for them when they get off the bus.
βThe news and the mayor from D.C. are saying the buses are just dropping people in the streets with no coordination, but thatβs not from our side in Arizona,β she said.
βGov. Ducey has said that he wants to have a humanitarian response to this. Regardless of all the other politics, at the end of the day, we have to respond in a humanitarian way because people are people, and they need us.β
Affecting local community, not Biden
NuΓ±ez says despite the better coordinated effort from Arizona than Texas, there are still Arizona passengers that donβt have a solid plan when they arrive.
Migrants who reach D.C. sometimes have changed their plans while on the bus and say they need to go to a friend or relative as far away as California.
If the governors of both states meant for the program to help immigrants get to their destinations, they would coordinate for buses to go to the places where many of the migrants are actually going, like New York, Chicago or Miami, he said.
βYet theyβve chosen to aim it at D.C.,β he says. βSo this is weaponizing immigrants. It is disgusting what theyβre doing. They should be held to account for it. And the taxpayers in both states should really be like, βYouβre spending our resources on making a political point.ββ
So far final costs for the program out of Arizona have not been calculated, said Duceyβs spokesman C.J. Karamargin, but the stateβs 2023 budget includes $15 million for βtransportation of individuals who entered Arizona seeking asylum to other states.β
NuΓ±ez also said if the governors are trying to affect the Biden administration, itβs not working.
βTheyβre not doing anything to the federal government,β he said. βTheyβre hurting local communities. I donβt work for the federal government. I serve the local community of Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Catholic Charities serves the local community of Washington, D.C.. So we are responding to it. So itβs our resources that we need to serve our community here that are being used.
βPresident Biden is sleeping very comfortably in the White House.β
