Arizona county fears ‘homelessness on steroids’ as migrant shelter funds end

An Arizona migrant shelter that has housed thousands of asylum seekers plans to halt most operations in two weeks when funding from Washington runs out, a problem for towns along the border where officials fear a surge in homelessness and extra costs.

Arizona’s Pima county, which borders Mexico, has said that at the end of the month its contracts must stop with Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter and services that transport migrants north from the border cities of Nogales, Douglas and Lukeville.

The Pima county administrator Jan Lesher said the county cannot afford the roughly $1m per week that previously would have been covered by federal funds.

The amount “is not something that can be easily absorbed into a Pima county budget”, she said.

Funding predicaments similar to Pima county’s are playing out in other border regions and far-away cities like New York City, Chicago and Denver that have received migrants.

As in Tucson, other local governments anticipate that without federal dollars, communities will face many more migrants living on their streets, greater demands on police, hospitals and sanitation services.

Pima county, which since 2019 has received over 400,000 migrants who have been processed by USborder authorities, estimated 400 to 1,000 migrants with nowhere to stay could start arriving daily in Tucson beginning in April.

Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund the US Department of Homeland Security, which pays for migrant services, along with other federal agencies. Current money could be temporarily extended as a stop-gap measure to keep DHS and other federal agencies running.

But additional funding for the shelter and transportation services has been caught in broader political battles about illegal migration and