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© Reuters. A younger migrant performs with toy vehicles at Casa Alitas in Tucson, Arizona, U.S., March 15, 2024. REUTERS/Rebecca Noble
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By Ted Hesson and Liliana Salgado
WASHINGTON/TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – An Arizona migrant shelter that has housed hundreds of asylum seekers plans to halt most operations in two weeks when funding from Washington runs out, an issue for cities alongside the border the place officers worry a surge in homelessness and additional prices.
Arizona’s Pima County, which borders Mexico, has mentioned that on the finish of the month its contracts should cease with Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter and companies that transport migrants north from the border cities of Nogales, Douglas and Lukeville.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher mentioned the county can not afford the roughly $1 million per week that beforehand would have been lined by federal funds.
The quantity “isn’t one thing that may be simply absorbed right into a Pima County finances,” she mentioned.
Funding predicaments much like Pima County’s are enjoying out in different border areas and far-away cities like New York Metropolis, Chicago and Denver which have acquired migrants.
As in Tucson, different native governments anticipate that with out federal {dollars}, communities will face many extra migrants dwelling on their streets, higher calls for on police, hospitals and sanitation companies.
Pima County, which since 2019 has acquired over 400,000 migrants who’ve been processed by U.S. border authorities, estimated 400 to 1,000 migrants with nowhere to remain may begin arriving day by day in Tucson starting in April.
Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety, which pays for migrant companies, together with different federal companies. Present cash could possibly be briefly prolonged as a stop-gap measure to maintain DHS and different federal companies working.
However further funding for the shelter and transportation companies has been caught in broader political battles about unlawful migration and authorities spending, and Congress is at an deadlock, largely on account of election-year politics.
Immigration is among the many high three considerations for voting-age People, and Arizona is an election battleground state that might assist determine management of the White Home and U.S. Senate.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat working in opposition to Republican former President Donald Trump for re-election on Nov. 5, has tried to attraction concurrently to the Democratic base in favor of defending asylum seekers whereas additionally courting different voters who wish to scale back the variety of unlawful crossings from Mexico.
Biden has grappled with report numbers of such migrants since he took workplace in 2021.
In current months, Biden has toughened his stance, blaming Republicans for opposing further border safety funding and laws that might grant him new enforcement authority.
Republicans counter that Biden ought to reinstate restrictive Trump insurance policies and finish new authorized entry packages earlier than Congress devotes extra money to frame safety.
‘HOMELESSNESS ON STEROIDS’
Casa Alitas began in 2014 as a church effort to assist Central American migrants whom authorities dropped at Tucson’s bus station. By 2023 it had served over 180,000 asylum seekers, largely households, who’re legally entitled to remain within the U.S. as they pursue their immigration circumstances.
Whereas some migrants come from Mexico, Guatemala and different Latin American international locations, Casa Alitas has lately housed individuals from West Africa, India and elsewhere.
At one in every of 5 Casa Alitas shelter websites final week, migrants rested on cots and acquired meals, clear garments, toiletries and help planning onward journey.
Sara Vasquez Gonzalez, 45, got here along with her husband and three of her six kids from Chiapas, Mexico, the place cartel violence has pushed Mexican households to flee to the U.S.
As they ate breakfast sandwiches, Vasquez mentioned criminals had shot at their home, forcing them to hunt refuge within the U.S.
“We misplaced our home, our corn, our harvest,” she mentioned.
Casa Alitas has already informed two-thirds of its 60-person workforce that they are going to be dismissed on account of lack of funding, based on Government Director Diego Lopez.
The shelter plans to scale back its capability from 1,400 individuals per day to 140, a degree that won’t even be sufficient to deal with all incoming households with infants and toddlers, he mentioned.
In December, Pima County acquired 46,000 migrants – greater than ever earlier than, based on county figures. Numbers have been slightly below 30,000 a month in January and February.
In a February memo to Pima officers, Lesher mentioned migrants being launched by Border Patrol with out shelter companies may lead to “homelessness on steroids.”
Tucson officers are contemplating organising a migrant web site with loos however no sleeping lodging. By giving migrants “some place the place they’ll go,” town hopes to keep away from individuals dwelling on the streets and ensuing calls on police and emergency companies, mentioned county spokesperson Mark Evans.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, final week despatched a letter to high U.S. lawmakers on funding committees saying her state wanted not less than $752 million in shelter funds. Within the meantime, Hobbs mentioned in a press convention that her workplace was working to seek out methods to take care of the state of affairs.
‘STOPPING THE FLOW’
In Congress, lawmakers representing the world are divided on the problem of shelter funding.
U.S. Consultant Raul Grijalva, a Democrat who represents a part of Pima County and greater than 350 miles (563 km) of the Mexico border, known as for extra federal funds and mentioned Republicans had been “persevering with to take advantage of the humanitarian disaster for his or her political achieve.”
U.S. Consultant Juan Ciscomani, a Republican whose district consists of one other a part of Pima County, mentioned in an interview that Biden ought to reinstate extra restrictive Trump-era insurance policies and improve deportations earlier than Congress offers extra money for migrant shelter and transportation.
“We have to deal with what would really clear up the issue, which is stopping the circulation on the border,” Ciscomani mentioned.
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