TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The immigration story in Pima County is about to come full circle. About 4 years ago CBP dropped off small groups of migrants at the Greyhound Station. The county made large-scale efforts to house immigrants as they were dropped off at the Greyhound station—and now there’s a chance of that happening again.
Federal money funding the Casa Alitas shelter has run out. New money channeled from Washington to Pima County includes less money, with more restrictions on how to spend it.
“Look at what's happening in Lukeville right now. That could be what's happening here on the streets of Tucson,” says County spokesperson Mark Evans.
With the reduced amount of money coming in, that leaves the county with money to shelter about 750 migrants a day—and there's an average of a thousand or more still coming in.
Evans says that leaves a real prospect of 350 migrants released on the streets. Single men would be field released first, but families could be turned out too.
“There is no guarantee. It just all depends on the volume, and at these historic levels—I mean it's just this week was worse than last week which was worse than the week before," Evans says. "We're we're gonna hit a breaking point eventually, one way or another.”
The migrants in these cases are legally in the U.S., while they wait for a judge to rule on their asylum claims. That process may take years.
In shelters they have a place to live for a day or two as they get help making travel arrangements to sponsor families.
The City of Tucson says it's worried about migrant safety if Border Patrol releases people with no place to stay.
"We will inevitably need to use some police resources. Some fire resources. We’ll need environmental services. We'll need to call on the community to help them at that point," says Lane Mandle, Chief of Staff to the City Manager.
"But we hope very sincerely that we don't get into that sort of a situation and we're doing everything we can to make sure that we have a humane solution. Having people on the street is not something that we want to do."
UPDATE 5:30 p.m.
Late Thursday following our report, Pima County said it will have enough budget to hold a shelter capacity of a thousand migrants—but probably only through the end of February.
The extra margin comes from a ruling that the county can use state health funds toward migrant care—and through other cost cutting. But Pima County says if migrant counts surge above a thousand day street releases could still happen.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.