After Stanton push, FEMA makes common-sense changes to the program
Today, Congressmen Greg Stanton and Raúl Grijalva announced nearly $55 million in Shelter and Services Program funds will go to Arizona communities on the front lines of the border crisis.
The announcement comes after Stanton and Grijalva sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell, urging them to quickly allocate funding under the replenished SSP and ensure border communities were prioritized.
Maricopa County will receive $11,606,329, Pima County will receive $21,827,581, World Hunger in Maricopa will receive $11,606,329, and World Hunger in Yuma will receive $9,532,854.
“This funding couldn’t come soon enough. I’ve visited local aid groups along the border, and they’re near a breaking point—over-stretching their budgets to help care for migrant families and prevent street releases,” Stanton said. “I’ll keep working to make sure Arizona communities get their fair share of federal resources to manage this crisis.”
“I appreciate the Biden administration’s swiftness to allocate this federal funding to Arizona. I will continue to work with federal, state, local, and non-governmental organizations to ensure this funding is distributed expeditiously. As Southern Arizona communities continue to deal with the humanitarian crisis, it’s critical we provide them with the resources and funding they need,” Grijalva said. “It’s clear that the only path forward to address these issues long-term is real immigration reform to fix our broken system beginning with humane solutions, increased legal pathways, dealing with root causes, and providing more resources and personnel at the border instead of Republicans’ detrimental funding cuts and failed enforcement-only policies.”
FEMA also announced several key changes to the program—including two common-sense fixes Stanton urged Biden Administration officials to make in a December letter.
- DHS will institute an acceptable A-Number Margin of Error of less than 5%. The SSP requires partners participating in the program to submit alien-numbers (or “A-numbers”) to be reimbursed. Because CBP does not share their manifests, local governments and nonprofits must rely on migrants to present their paperwork and utilize staff time to input A-numbers into databases during surges. In Pima County, fiscal agents for the Southern Arizona Coalition report that there is typically an error rate of 3-5% in A-numbers collected directly from migrants. FEMA then crosschecks submitted A-numbers with CBP data. Previously, A-numbers that could not be validated resulted in non-reimbursement, leaving the County responsible for covering costs incurred for thousands of individuals.
- DHS will remove the hotel/motel and onward destination funding caps. Previously, the SSP capped hoteling at 10% of total funding requested. Stanton raised the concerns of the Southern Arizona Coalition with FEMA, for which the cap meant the coalition could only count on SSP coverage for two hotels, when it needs cost coverage for five hotels to prevent street releases.