A migrant shelter’s impending closure in Arizona is sparking fears that asylum seekers with no place to go could potentially contribute towards a homelessness problem in the state.
The Casa Alitas shelter in Tucson, located in Pima County and about a one-hour drive from the U.S.-Mexico border, is expected to stop most operations in a couple weeks due to a lack of federal funding combined with not enough local dollars available to subsidize the more than 130,000 legally processed asylum seekers released by the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector into Cochise, Santa Cruz and Pima counties since September 1, 2023, officials say.
Last week, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, requested $752 million in federal funding to keep such services afloat. In a letter addressed to the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, she suggested the sum be paid to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Shelter and Services Program, with the funding requested from the Homeland Security appropriations bill.
Hobbs wrote that services in her state were “on the brink of operational limitations,” and that without the funding “critical services could be compromised.”
Pima County, like the Democratic-run sanctuary cities of Chicago, New York City and Denver, is on the frontlines of dealing with an influx of migrants. As of February 29, the county has received more than 400,000 arrivals of individuals and families seeking asylum since 2019.
Numbers hovered around 20,300 as of August 2023 before escalating to nearly 26,900 the following month and topping out at approximately 40,000 in December, according to data provided to Newsweek by the county.
Illegal immigration, meanwhile, is among the top issues ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with polls showing that voters have doubts about President Joe Biden‘s handling of the situation, on which former President Donald Trump has promised tougher action. There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to CBP data.
Jan Lesher, county administrator of Pima County, wrote in a letter last month that reality set in regarding the likelihood of not receiving any additional funding from the federal government in the near future.
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