After more than five years of housing asylum seekers, Pima County officials say they are closing their doors.
County officials announced on Thursday they will shut down two shelters in Tucson, ending what was the largest humanitarian effort they have ever taken on.
In all, about 518,000 asylum seekers came through shelters run by the county, the City of Tucson and local nonprofits, at a cost of nearly $118 million in federal dollars.
But now there aren’t any more asylum seekers to house. County officials said the shelters emptied after President Donald Trump issued executive orders to shut off access to asylum at the border.
Even if asylum seekers were still being released in Tucson, county officials believe one of Trump’s executive orders would put an immediate hold on federal funding to shelter them.
Without those federal dollars, the financial burden would shift to the county. And the Board of Supervisors have required since 2019 that “local taxpayers be held harmless” for the cost of housing asylum seekers, County Administrator Jan Lesher wrote in a memo.
The county-owned shelters on Drexel Road and Ajo Way will stay open until Sunday to allow asylum seekers who are already at the shelters to get transported to their final destinations.
“This will likely bring to a close one of the most significant humanitarian aid programs undertaken by Pima County and its regional partners in the County’s history,” Lesher wrote in a news release.
Without the large-scale community effort, thousands of asylum seekers “would have been left to fend for themselves on the streets of Tucson, Nogales, Douglas, and elsewhere in Southern Arizona,” Lesher wrote, calling it a “noble and humane program.”
As for what happens next, county officials are looking at other uses for the facilities, possibly as homeless shelters.
And the fate of asylum seekers, and the asylum system as a whole, remains unclear as Trump sets in motion his immigration crackdown.
Public utility still on the table
The Tucson City Council continued to signal on Wednesday that it is undeterred by a likely billion-dollar price tag to launch its own electric utility.
While no one agrees on how much it would cost, there is a good chance this could go before a judge if Tucson Electric Power balks at selling all or a portion of its existing infrastructure, and it seems likely that the city would need to get voter approval to finance the sale.
But the Council is still talking about it publicly for now.
During Wednesday’s council meeting, Councilmember Paul Cunningham noted that when TEP’s parent company was sold to Canadian-based Fortis Inc. in 2014, the sale price was about $2.5 billion, with the new parent company also taking on roughly $1.8 billion in debt.
He may have tipped his hand slightly during the meeting that the total cost is concerning, saying there is huge potential for neighborhoods to partner with the city on solar-powered microgrids that are backed up by massive battery banks.
“‘I’ve long argued that we could have, specifically HOAs as a pilot, that we could share (the costs) of a battery program powered by rooftop solar,” Cunningham said.
A majority of the Council said they’re considering all options, but waiting for a final report from their contractor, GDS Associates, in May.
At the call to the public, several individuals said a municipal utility could hold down costs to taxpayers in the long run better than privately owned TEP.
Over 2,000 people have signed a petition organized by the Tucson Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America to form a city-run electric utility.
Joining the fight
The Council also instructed City Attorney Mike Rankin to write a brief supporting Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes as she fights Trump's executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship.
The executive order already is on hold, as a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order to block it on Thursday, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” An appeal from the Trump administration is likely.
You know what’s blatantly constitutional? The First Amendment. Subscribe to the Tucson Agenda for all your constitutional news needs.
New name
Also on Wednesday, the Council approved changing the name of Mansfield Park to Doris J. Thompson Park — a beloved icon of the Sugar Hill Neighborhood.
Councilman Kevin Dahl noted the park was once called “Northwest Park” before being renamed and it is fitting to change the name again to honor Thompson.
“This action honors a black woman whose hard work and dedication uplifted a whole generation. People who grew up organized and then later asked for this name change,” Dahl said.
Cleaning up the language
If you’ve ever read a city ordinance, you know they’re often filled with nearly indecipherable legalese and bureaucratic double-speak. But for a lawyer looking to cash in on the recently voter-approved Proposition 312, they might be perfect for a lawsuit.
The Council ordered Rankin to review the city’s ordinances and other policies with regard to Prop 312, which requires local governments to reimburse property owners for money they lost due to unenforced nuisance laws, to mitigate future claims against the city.
Not going to do it: After Department of Justice officials said they planned to prosecute local officials who don’t go along with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said it seemed federal officials “don’t have better things to do” and repeated his commitment to not get involved in immigration enforcement, the Arizona Daily Star’s Charles Borla reports.
Preparing for the worst: Day-laborers on Tucson’s south side are conducting drills to prepare for Border Patrol raids, the Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington and Carolina Cuellar report. They’ve been bracing for the incoming administration’s promised mass deportations since Trump was elected in November.
Need some breathing room: Special education teachers are asking the Tucson Unified School District’s Governing Board to improve their working conditions, like dealing with unmanageable caseloads, the Tucson Sentinel’s Natalie Robbins reports. Susanne Wilson, an occupational therapist at TUSD, said “some days, it feels like survival mode.”
Case closed: Now that former state Sen. Justine Wadsack has finished her defensive driving course, a Tucson judge dismissed the criminal speeding charges filed against her, the Star’s Erika Wurst reports. The dismissal brings to a close a case that began last March when Wadsack was pulled over going twice the speed limit on Speedway, and promptly started claiming she was being prosecuted for her political beliefs.
Why was Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure talking about the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior about 50 years ago during Wednesday’s Council meeting?
We assure you that it wasn’t a reference to Gordon Lightfoot’s classic song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Instead Thomure quoted word for word the last transmission of the ship before it sank during a massive storm: “We are holding our own.”
Thomure was referring to the state of the city’s budget halfway into the current fiscal cycle when he used the quote.
But it signals to those who know the fate of the Edmund Fitzgerald that the future of the city’s revenues is hard to predict during stormy (political) weather.