The Daily Agenda: New York eats Arizona's piece of the pie
Pima County needs that money to care for asylum seekers ... New York City received 110,000 asylum seekers in last year ... New transition center at Pima County jail.
New York City is getting a ton of money that otherwise would have gone to Arizona efforts to help asylum seekers.
We’re talking about millions of federal dollars that keep facilities like the Casa Alitas Welcome Center afloat. Without that money, we could see the nightmare scenario of thousands of people, including children, dropped off on Tucson’s streets without knowing where they are or how to get to where they’re going.
Unfortunately for Southern Arizona, officials in New York City muscled their way to the front of the line. They got $104 million in the most recent round of funding this summer, while Arizona got less than one-fourth as much, about $24 million.
The money comes from a federal program set up to funnel funds to local governments and organizations that aid asylum seekers. (If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of the program, the Tucson Sentinel’s Paul Ingram broke down how the funding works earlier this summer.)
For now, Pima County has enough federal funds to keep giving asylum seekers a safe landing spot for a few days before they head to their destinations, which costs about $1.8 million each month.
But county officials warn they’ll run out of money to support asylum seekers by late spring or early summer.
New York certainly has an argument for needing more money. About 110,000 migrants and asylum seekers have made their way to New York in the past year or so, including about 13,000 on buses paid for by the governor of Texas and several thousand more from Florida, Arizona, and other states.
The challenges are costlier in New York than they are in Tucson, where asylum seekers arrive and leave within a day or two. We read the news coverage (the New York Times is running stories several times a week) and came away with three main challenges in New York:
New York’s right-to-shelter law means city officials are required to provide shelter to anyone who asks for it, which can last for weeks or months.
Asylum seekers do not have work permits for the first six months they are in the country, so their main options are public assistance or working in the underground economy.
Many of the asylum seekers in New York are from Venezuela. They generally don’t have as many family connections in the U.S. as people from countries like Mexico or Guatemala, so they need more time and help getting set up.
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These are difficult challenges, to be sure, but we can’t help noticing that Democratic officials in New York are stumbling all over each other as they try to handle the problem.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have sparred for months over who should cover the costs, at times allying to pressure President Joe Biden and Congress to come up with the money or at least find a way for asylum seekers to work legally.
Adams is escalating his comments about funding for asylum seekers. Last week, he said “this issue will destroy New York City” and called for 15 percent budget cuts across city departments.
New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, fired back on Saturday, saying “scapegoating asylum seekers will not improve education, public safety, housing affordability or quality of life for New Yorkers.”
The White House, meanwhile, is blaming Congress, saying “only Congress can reform our broken immigration system and provide additional resources to communities across the country.”
The political dysfunction didn’t go unnoticed by Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema. They are not happy about New York getting so much of the federal funds and demanded last month that the remaining funds go to border communities. They complained “the program is proving problematic and your agencies’ poor management is causing Arizona to lose vital partners in our border management network.”
Sinema hasn’t let up. She blasted the Biden administration’s priorities at an event in Tucson on Friday, saying the amount of funding given to Arizona was an “egregious action” that was “ridiculous” and “outrageous,” as the Arizona Republic’s José Ignacio Castañeda Perez reported.
She has good reason to treat the funding issue with urgency. The Tucson area is becoming the busiest on the border, taking the place of South Texas. The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector reported about 39,000 encounters with migrants and asylum seekers in July. That’s about 14,000 more than the busiest sectors in Texas.
Pima County taxpayers and elected officials will face an extraordinarily difficult choice if the Biden administration, or Congress, doesn’t find a way to cover New York’s costs: We’ll have to either come up with millions of dollars to support asylum seekers, or give up and let the Border Patrol release thousands of people directly onto Tucson’s streets.
Far from perfect: Residents of a new affordable housing complex located north of Downtown say repairs have been slow and crime is too high, even though the development has been open less than a year, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel reports. The complex was built and managed by La Frontera and is part of the “Thrive in the ‘05” program, an ongoing, multi-partner effort to create affordable housing and improve the area.
Bad behavior: A new report highlights hundreds of incidents of human rights violations at the U.S.-Mexico border, including assault, denial of medical care, family separation, dangerous deportation, confiscation of personal documents and more, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel writes. The alleged incidents and lack of response show a pattern of “impunity” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to the report’s authors.
Set up for success: Pima County opened a new Transition Center at the Pima County jail last week as part of ongoing efforts to reduce rearrests and failures to appear in court, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. “Justice Navigators” will connect released individuals with services including transportation, shelters, treatment centers and a free cell phone with three months of service.
Preserving history: Congressman Juan Ciscomani was in Cochise County Thursday, announcing plans for $3.8 million in reconstruction to part of the Buffalo Soldier Trail, KGUN9’s Alexis Ramanjulu reports. Sierra Vista officials say there’s about $24 million worth of work to be done to three miles of the road, with the newly secured funding to be used for phase one of the project, which will cover half a mile in repairs and reconstruction.
Border wall fallout: A federal audit of the Southwest border wall construction under President Donald Trump found threats to endangered wildlife and “irreparable” damage to natural and cultural resources, the Arizona Luminaria’s Carolina Cuellar reports. The two-year investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, shows that federal contractors used explosives to clear sovereign Indigenous lands to expand a patrol road.
“The blasting damaged portions of Monument Hill, a site that the Hia-C’ed O’odham, ancestors of the Tohono O’odham, and other Tribes historically used for religious ceremonies and that remains important to several Indigenous communities,” the audit states.
Jobs in jeopardy: The Santa Cruz County Superintendent’s Office is set to lose a major contract with the Arizona Department of Education, which will jeopardize several local education positions and programs, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi writes. The termination of the county’s use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds creates uncertainty for 14 positions and would cancel or impact several grant-funded educational initiatives ranging from behavioral health resources to an early childcare center.
111: The temperature in Tucson on Sunday, which set a record for the hottest September day.
