A surge in border crossings this week has stretched the region’s migrant-aid network to capacity and prompted Border Patrol agents to release migrants into the streets, without pre-arranged transportation or support, in four small Arizona cities.
“Unsheltered” street releases — those that don’t involve advance coordination with migrant-aid providers — began Wednesday in Nogales, Douglas, Bisbee and Casa Grande, and are also “perilously close” to happening in Tucson, officials say.
But so far none of the released migrants, who have all been processed as asylum seekers by U.S. border agents, have been left unsheltered overnight, officials in Cochise and Santa Cruz counties told the Star.
Through close coordination with Pima County emergency management, and the state Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, the released migrants have all been transported to short-term shelter providers like Casa Alitas in Tucson and the International Rescue Committee in Phoenix, usually after just a few hours’ wait in the small communities where they were released.
Asylum seekers are then quickly connected to family or sponsors often in the interior of the U.S., and typically leave Arizona’s migrant shelters within 24 to 48 hours.
But it’s not clear how long these under-resourced communities, and the agencies that support them, can keep up with the accelerated pace of migrant releases.
“We are on the precipice of (migrants) being unsheltered overnight in Bisbee,” Daniel Duchon, director of Cochise County Emergency Management, said in a Thursday interview. “It hasn’t happened yet. I’m on the phone 24/7 with state and Pima County emergency management, going ‘Help me out,’ and they do it every time. But at a certain point, if the numbers keep going up, they’ll have to say, ‘Dan, I can’t.’”
Since June, Cochise County has been receiving migrants released by the Border Patrol, but with enough notice that federally funded transportation services could meet the migrants upon arrival, Duchon said.
“Those releases have been seamless,” Duchon said. “Pima County and DEMA (the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs) are running three buses a day to Douglas and another three to Bisbee. The scope of this effort they’re doing is nothing short of phenomenal.”
But the new rapid street releases pose a major challenge, he said. Volunteers and faith-based organizations in Douglas have stepped up to offer some shelter options, but Bisbee still lacks any real housing options for migrants who would need overnight stays, he said.
Santa Cruz County is preparing for the possibility that migrants released in Nogales may require shelter overnight, but that hasn’t happened yet, José Arriola, deputy director for health and human services for Santa Cruz County, said on Thursday.
“Being a small community, our resources are stretched kind of thin. We’re making it work with what we have,” he said. “This is a federal problem and unfortunately, it’s falling on us.”
Between Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, about 100 migrants had been released in Douglas and nearly 60 released in Bisbee, Cochise County officials said. A spokesman for Pinal County, home to Casa Grande, directed the Star to the county sheriff’s department for comment on the street releases, but the Star did not receive a response before deadline.
Duchon said on Wednesday night in Bisbee, he watched as a few migrant families, including children ages 3 to 5, took shelter in front of a Safeway store where border agents had left them. It was 6 p.m. and raining as Duchon called DEMA officials to ask if they could send another bus by 7 p.m. Thankfully, a bus was available, but the situation is untenable, he said.
“We’re in desperate need,” Duchon said. “It breaks my heart.”
Surge in apprehensions
For the past week Border Patrol agents have reported apprehending 4,000 people a day crossing the border in the Tucson Sector, said Mark Evans, spokesman for Pima County, which is the fiduciary of the federal funding for migrant-aid services.
Those numbers bring the situation in Tucson to crisis levels last seen in May on the eve of the expiration of Title 42, the pandemic-era measure that allowed the federal government to expel some migrants from the country immediately. That was the closest Pima County came to having uncontrolled street releases, Evans said.
“We think this is just a wave that is going to crest, and then it will go back to the 500 (apprehensions) a day that it was, and everything goes back to normal,” Evans said.
Typically the Border Patrol closely coordinates with local governments and migrant-aid organizations to ensure a smooth handover of migrants leaving Border Patrol custody. But border officials have been processing and releasing migrants quicker, and with less warning, to ensure their facilities maintain safe standards for detainees.
Border Patrol agents said their facilities are “dangerously full” lately, Evans said.
‘We fully understand the situation that the Border Patrol is in,” Evans said. “We understand their need to release people. But at the same time we don’t want to create dangerous conditions for the people being released without shelter or without support services into the community. It’s taking them from one danger to the next.”
Following a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, Border Patrol detention facilities in the Tucson Sector must meet certain conditions of confinement laid out in a permanent injunction issued in 2020.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman John Mennell said Thursday that when non-governmental organizations that offer short-term shelter for migrants are over capacity, the Border Patrol coordinates with local governments to find drop-off locations where migrants can access transportation services or other accommodations.
A Thursday CBP statement said the agency “is working according to plan and as part of our standard processes to quickly decompress the areas along the Southwest border, and safely and efficiently screen and process migrants to place them in immigration enforcement proceedings consistent with our laws.”
Anger in Cochise County
Cochise County officials held a news conference on Thursday to demand a federal solution to the immigration crisis, to decry border-related crime and to plead with local residents to avoid falling into vigilantism.
Frustration about street releases should be directed at the federal government, not at the vulnerable migrants in the community, Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre told reporters.
“I’ve seen, unfortunately, the reaction online to the newest changes in policy,” McIntyre said. “They include threatening statements and in general, an attitude of disgust for people who are just pawns in a process.”
The asylum seekers released in Cochise County are “lawfully present in our community,” McIntyre said.
“While we may not agree with that decision, the blame for that does not belong with these human beings,” he said. “I implore the members of this community to band together. Together we will get through this, without harm coming to any person during the process.”
“Vigilantes won’t be tolerated,” said Willcox Police Chief Dale Hadfield during the news conference. “These people are being street-released legally to go forth and try to find a better life. … This is a public safety issue. It’s not a political issue.”
Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels highlighted border-related crime that’s hit Cochise County, including dangerous high-speed chases, assaults and human smuggling. He clarified that in the vast majority of cases, migrants weren’t the culprits.
Of the nearly 2,400 border-related offenses committed in Cochise County in the last 18 months, 136 of them involved people who were foreign born or present illegally in the U.S., Dannels said.
“What that tells me … is the people coming to Cochise County are coming down from all over the U.S., ages 13 to 72, to commit international crime in Cochise County,” he said. “That’s impacted every community.”
Dannels also expressed frustration that Border Patrol representatives declined to appear at the Thursday press event and answer questions.
“I invited Border Patrol today to come speak at this. They weren’t allowed to come,” he said. “I’m so disappointed to hear that they could not come. They should stand in front of you just like we are.”
