Border Patrol expects to quadruple spending as more immigrant families arrive in Arizona

by Anna Giaritelli
| April 22, 2019 12:00 AM



As more families enter the country illegally, it costs the U.S. Border Patrol more to take care of them.
Agents apprehended 25,000 immigrants traveling as parts of families in southwestern Arizona over the past six months and expect to spend four times as much on food, baby products, and on-site medical care in 2019 as it did last year, an official told the Washington Examiner.


Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector, one of nine on the southern border, spent $300,000 on diapers, formula, food, and basic medical care for those in its custody in fiscal 2018.


As of March 31, the halfway point into fiscal 2019, the sector had spent $600,000 on those same items and services. It now expects to hit $1.2 million by Sept. 30, according to sector spokesman Justin Kallinger.


In February, Congress gave Border Patrol's parent agency Customs and Border Protection $40 million for food, formula, and diapers though it's not clear how any unused funds will be handled.


Yuma has seen the third-most apprehensions nationwide of immigrants who traveled with a family member to the U.S. Apprehensions of people who illegally crossed the Colorado River to enter the U.S. from Mexico in that region have quadrupled in Yuma in the first six months of 2019 compared to the same period last year.


The city of Yuma is the only one along the international boundary to have declared a state of emergency as a result of the surge, in part because it is smaller than the two other regions that have seen larger surges but have more government and nongovernmental resources.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan announced earlier this month 650 field officers were being deployed to hard-hit Border Patrol sectors. Yuma got an additional 50 officers, but Kallinger said the supplemental support on top of their 800 agents does not address the other shortage: a lack of room in federal buildings.


The three Border Patrol stations in the region can hold 400 people, but they have been pushing it to 500 in recent weeks. Agents in the region apprehend 100 to 200 people per day — sometimes up to 350 — and then have nowhere to hold people while they are processed and undergo initial medical evaluations, typically within 72 hours of being taken into custody.


Kallinger said Border Patrol is releasing migrant families directly onto the streets or into the care of local organizations instead of turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement because the sister agency is also out of room in facilities to hold people that will end up being released after 20 days.


Nearly 15 years ago, the region saw a massive uptick in illegal immigration similar to this one. However, Kallinger said it was different then because they were encountering adult men from Mexico who were processed in a quarter of the time a Central American child is and could be deported the same day.


“These people are not from a contiguous country (Mexico or Canada), so we can’t just take them back. Their cases have to be adjudicated,” he said. “At a certain point, we can’t just hold them in our facilities anymore.”
Kallinger said Yuma as a city is also facing a shortage of medical service providers.


“We only have one hospital, and that’s to serve the whole community, which is the whole Yuma County. We have snowbird season — our population goes from 100,000 to 200,000. It doubles. Most of that age group still needs medical attention quite a bit. Our [emergency rooms] are stacked already before we start with the illegal aliens we have to take to the hospital,” he said.


Last year, people in Border Patrol custody accrued $700,000 in medical costs that were paid by local taxpayers. The agency is evaluating every person on-site at stations to avoid sending more people than necessary to hospitals and urgent care centers for basic care.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ive-in-arizona