PIMA COUNTY, April 28, 2023 - Dr. Francisco Garcia, Deputy County Administrator and Chief Medical Officer for Pima County, appeared on Capitol Hill April 26 with Shane Clark, director of the County’s Office of Emergency Management, for a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on the effects of U.S. immigration policy on border communities.
The two County officials appeared before the Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management at the invitation of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the committee chair. They joined a panel of border community leaders that also included Sierra Vista Mayor Clea McCaa II and Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls.
Garcia told the committee Pima County’s involvement in sheltering asylum seekers, which began in 2019 as a temporary measure, is untenable, and that a federal solution is needed.
“At the time, we thought it was temporary and County involvement would be just for a month or two,” he said. “Here we are exactly four years later, and Pima County is still heavily involved in assisting with the sheltering, feeding, medical screening, and transportation of thousands of asylum seekers per month.”
Garcia said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has brought to Tucson and released more than 150,000 individuals, and has signaled this amount may double after May 11, when Title 42, the COVID-era federal policy of quickly expelling border-crossers, is set to expire.
“If that happens, we will be overwhelmed and there will many hundreds of people per day left to fend for themselves on the streets of Pima County,” he said.
Garcia stressed that caring for asylum seekers should be a federal responsibility, but acknowledged the unlikelihood of direct federal engagement.
“If the results of this hearing and other congressional action are that Congress and the executive take this burden off our hands and stop releasing asylum seekers in our communities, that will be welcome by the people of Pima County. But absent that sort of direct federal engagement, I implore you at a minimum to find a better, easier way to fund local governments and organizations who are shouldering this burden on behalf of the federal government.”
District 5 Supervisor and Board Chair Adelita Grijalva concurred.
“For the past four years, we have managed to provide a compassionate response to this crisis by working with the City of Tucson and our community partners,” she said. “But this is ultimately a crisis of federal policy, and it’s time for the federal government to respond.”