Today, Rep. Greg Stanton urged Biden Administration officials to make common-sense fixes to future awards under the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program, through which local governments and nonprofit organizations are reimbursed for the cost of providing essential services to migrants.
“Disappointingly, this new program has thus far failed to meet the needs of Arizona’s border communities who are experiencing unprecedented numbers of migrants released by the Department of Homeland of Security,” Stanton wrote.
Specifically, Stanton raises concerns with:
- The current model for federal disbursement of SSP funds, which prioritizes interior communities to the detriment of border communities that provide the most immediate care to migrants. The Southern Arizona Coalition—a group of cities, counties, and NGOs—was only eligible to apply for $12 million in assistance, while New York received nearly nine times that. Southern Arizona is on track to spend the entirety of their funding in just three months.
- Impractical and inflexible spending restrictions that limit the reach of services, like the arbitrary 10% cap on hoteling, which means the coalition can only count on SSP coverage for two hotels, when it needs cost coverage for five hotels to prevent street releases and to quarantine individuals with COVID-19 or other infectious diseases.
- Rates of reimbursement for local governments and NGOs that are woefully insufficient, and do not reflect the ongoing needs on the ground. The program currently requires partners to submit migrants’ alien-numbers (or “A-numbers”) to be reimbursed—but a typical error rate of 3-5% leaves local partners on the hook to cover costs for thousands of migrants.
Full text of the letter is available HERE.
Stanton has led the call in the House to pass the Administration’s $13.6 billion emergency border security funding request, which includes $1.4 billion to replenish the depleted Shelter and Services Program.