PIMA COUNTY, Dec. 22, 2022 – The Pima County Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted 4-1 to lease a 62,000-square-foot building on Drexel Road west of Interstate 19 and convert it into a shelter for asylum seekers who are brought to Pima County by the Department of Homeland Security.
County Administrator Jan Lesher told the Board it will take between 30-60 days to convert the former office building into a shelter capable of supporting nearly 400 people. The six-month lease will cost about $330,000, though it could be extended if needed.
Homeland Security agencies have released more than 33,000 asylum seekers in Tucson over the past four months and more than 111,000 since January 2019. For humanitarian and public health and safety reasons, Pima County provides administrative, logistical, and funding support to local organizations that provide aid to the asylum seekers. Catholic Community Services is the lead agency providing shelter, food, and transportation assistance, though there are numerous organizations participating and hundreds of volunteers.
CCS operates its Casa Alitas Welcome Center in a building leased from the County on East Ajo Way, and the County and City of Tucson contract with several local hotels to provide the additional beds needed for up to 500 asylum seekers released in Tucson per day. When there are surges in releases, city-contracted hotels are activated and can provide another 200 beds or so, depending on room availability.
Having asylum seekers spread out at multiple locations in the city increases logistical and staffing complexity. The converted office building on Drexel will streamline the current assistance process and make it more efficient, potentially reducing the time an asylum seeker spends in Tucson and reducing costs. The County will contract with CCS to operate the Drexel shelter.
Over the past few months, the County has been spending an average of $400,000 a week on asylum seeker sheltering services, mostly hotel leases, transportation, meals, and COVID-19 monitoring. The County so far has received and will expend $34 million through the end of December 2022. The County continues to work closely with its federal funder and its program leadership at United Way Worldwide to secure additional federal funding for the services needed to assist asylum seekers released in Pima County. Administrator Lesher has insisted federal funding pay for the sheltering needs of asylum seekers who are released here by federal agencies.
Asylum seekers are generally only in Tucson for 24 to 48 hours. If not for governmental and non-governmental agency partnership, (Pima County, City of Tucson, CCS and the Inn of Southern Arizona), asylum seekers would be released by DHS agencies with no resource network, shelter, or culturally appropriate support.
“The Drexel shelter will help us continue to manage the sheltering needs for people caught up in the federal immigration system,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Sharon Bronson. “It’s sad and frustrating that 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. This is a federal problem and it requires a federal solution. We shouldn’t be in the asylum seeker sheltering business.”
Background and Title 42
DHS agencies have been releasing asylum seekers in Pima County for years, though it increased significantly in 2018. Federal law requires U.S. immigration authorities to release into the U.S. anyone seeking asylum once they’ve been granted an asylum hearing.
Asylum seekers are legally in the United States. They are processed at the border by Homeland Security and given hearing dates for their asylum claims that are usually many months in the future. Federal law allows asylum seekers to stay in the U.S. while waiting for their hearing. Once released by Homeland Security at the border, nearly all asylum seekers travel to other parts of the country where they have family or sponsors who host them while they wait.
Department of Homeland Security agencies will only transport asylum seekers from where they presented at the border to the nearest community that meets its release criteria. They have released asylum seekers in numerous communities in Southern Arizona besides Tucson, including Ajo, Douglas, and Nogales. Because those communities don’t have the sheltering and volunteer resources Pima County does, the County has contracted with transportation companies to transport people released in these rural areas to Tucson where they can be assisted with their further travel needs. However, arrangements between CCS and Homeland Security have resulted in the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers being released to CCS at its Casa Alitas Welcome Center on Ajo Way.
Homeland Security also has brought asylum seekers to Tucson from other areas of the border, including from El Paso, Texas, and Yuma whenever those communities have become overwhelmed with asylum claims.
In March 2020, the Trump Administration implemented a provision of Title 42 of the U.S. Health Code that allowed it to deny entry to anyone who the government believed presented a danger of spreading communicable disease. The Title 42 provision and other immigration enforcement actions dramatically reduced releases of asylum seekers in Pima County from as many as 2,800 the month before the pandemic to an average of 22 a month from April 2020 to January 2021.
Releases began to steadily increase in March 2021 and have substantially increased since. In the current month, releases are on pace to exceed 11,000. These increased releases of asylum seekers have occurred irrespective of Title 42 provisions still being enforced by immigration agencies. Once Title 42 ends, DHS has told County officials the amount of asylum claims will increase and even more releases of asylum seekers will occur daily in Pima County than there have been to date.
County, City, and CCS officials 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.