Cities and counties along the southern border are struggling to deal with the influx of migrants as a result of the Biden administration’s border policies.
Officials in Tucson and Pima County, Arizona are scrambling to find housing for migrants expected in late March when federal funding ends.
Suggestions include sending migrants to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base or Phoenix.
NEW: We were live on the air as the first of many Border Patrol buses began arriving and mass releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants to San Diego’s streets. We spoke to many of them live – they are from all around the world and they are planning to go to blue cities in U.S. pic.twitter.com/7AZlNL0TFP
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 23, 2024
Pima County says caring for migrants costs $1 million per month. Officials in San Diego face a similar crisis as federal shelters run out of funds.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher said, “What we are about to experience with street releases is homelessness on steroids.”
“But every dollar spent helping legally processed asylum seekers move on to their destination cities will be a dollar we can’t spend on county residents who are struggling financially to afford adequate housing, or who are suffering from mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction,” he continued.
Mayor Bill Wells of El Cajon, California warned of migrants congregating in streets as Border Patrol expects daily drop-offs in the city to increase from 300 to 1,000.
Mayor Wells claimed, in the past few months, “100,000 migrants come across the San Diego border.”
“A lot of those have been absorbed by this county shelter that used taxpayer money,” he explained.
Adding, “They asked for $3 million and they spent over $6 million and now they say they’re out of money. So, we’re going to see migrants congregating in our streets.”
“I think it’s going to become a pretty serious problem pretty quickly,” warned the mayor.
“The Border Patrol tells us we’re going to go from about 300 drop-offs a day to maybe a thousand drop-offs a day.”
Mayor Wells said, “They spent up to $8,000 per person per month to put somebody up in a hotel, and they seem to have no problem spending that kind of money. It ruins the neighborhoods, it destroys the hotels, it destroys our security infrastructure. And it’s really bad for everybody.”
Both cities have exhausted millions in taxpayer dollars on temporary migrant housing and support.
