Pima County, Jan. 12, 2024 - The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) National Board has granted Pima County an extension to spend a balance of $5.2 million to continue its work aiding Legally Processed Asylum Seekers (LPAS) who have crossed the U.S. border into the Tucson Sector and been legally processed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The announcement of the approval to spend the $5.2 million comes at a critical time, as existing funds were expected to run out at the end of February 2024.
EFSP is a FEMA-funded program that supplements and expands ongoing work of local nonprofit and governmental social service organizations to provide shelter, food and supportive services to individuals and families who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, hunger and/or homelessness.
The County has been working closely with the City of Tucson and the interfaith community since 2019 to provide temporary shelter, food and transportation assistance to people brought to the community by federal officials. The local faith community's response, facilitated by the County, has grown into a regional effort involving numerous governments and agencies.
The number of individuals seeking asylum has grown exponentially in the last four months. Consider that from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023, the Tucson Sector had 402,711 encounters with asylum seekers. Yet in just two months -- Oct. 1-Nov. 30, 2023 – Customs and Border Protection had 128,072 encounters.
The new funding should allow sheltering operations to continue through mid-April, 2024.
The need for more federal assistance was a highlight of Board of Supervisors’ Chair Adelita Grijalva’s November visit to Washington, D.C., in which she met with Biden Administration officials and members of Congress, and was the subject of a joint guest opinion by Grijalva and Tucson Mayor Regina Romero in the Jan. 7 Sunday edition of the Arizona Daily Star.
“We can keep doing it as long as the federal government keeps funding it,” wrote Grijalva and Romero. “We have proven that local agencies can manage and prevent the harmful effects of federal immigration policy if Congress provides the funding.”
“The work of this coalition over the past five years has been frankly heroic,” said Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher. “It has prevented a humanitarian crisis and kept our streets safer. But we can’t do it by ourselves. We must work with our partners in the federal government toward a sustainable solution, and this is a productive step in that direction.”
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