NEW YORK — Leaders of large American cities have been begging the Biden administration for more money to house tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Southern border into the United States. Now two fiscal chiefs say they are actually being shortchanged by confusion over bureaucratic bookkeeping.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman joined forces to implore Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to loosen rules around collecting identification numbers given to migrants when they enter the U.S. In a written request sent to Mayorkas Friday and obtained by POLITICO via freedom-of-information request, the money managers say his agency only informed cities of the requirement to gather “A-numbers” in November, more than a year after migrants began arriving.
“Since the Spring of 2022, our cities have expended tremendous local resources to provide immediate shelter and care for tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants, filling in the gaps of a broken immigration system,” Lander and Guzman wrote, noting the cities have shelled out “many times more on services for migrants than we have been awarded by the federal government."
“To date, however, we have not received all the federal reimbursement funds that were awarded to our cities, due to significant administrative barriers in the requirements for reimbursement,” they added.
At stake in New York is more than $100 million in unlocked federal money, Lander said in an interview. Since spring of 2022, 168,500 migrants have arrived in New York, according to City Hall’s latest figures.
During a visit to Washington, D.C., in November, the New York comptroller said he learned the city had only received $45 million of $145 million it was granted by the Department of Homeland Security. Agency officials said they would release the remaining funds if the Adams administration provided the identification numbers it didn’t initially know to collect.
The mayor’s team, meanwhile, has spent $1.4 billion in migrant-related costs, according to Lander’s letter.
Guzman said Chicago has only received about $11 million of the $290 million it has spent thus far.
Despite providing migrants with housing and other services, the cities did not initially collect the “sensitive personal immigration information including A-numbers” because of local laws around confidentiality, according to the letter.
“Private information is not necessarily something every migrant is willing to give to us,” Guzman said in an interview. “There’s a sense of fear in how it’s going to be used.”
A publicly-available notice informing cities of available funding dated June 12, 2023 — months after migrants began arriving in the cities — makes clear that federal reimbursements are dependent upon “Alien Registration Number (A-Number) or evidence of DHS process.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declined to comment, saying the agency would respond to the letter in an official capacity.
To date, New York State has received more than $140 million and Illinois has gotten more than $40 million in federal funding in the 2023 fiscal year for migrant-related costs, as the Biden administration pushes congress to approve additional resources, an agency official noted.
The request comes as both cities grapple with larger political issues: Chicago is set to host the Democratic National Convention this summer, and in New York, the mayor’s relationship with President Joe Biden has soured over the migrant crisis.
But in a statement, Adams’ office saved its fire for Lander.
Mayoral spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said the city has assisted more than 100,000 migrants since spring of 2022 in “tak[ing] the next steps in their journeys and begin self-sufficient lives.”
“After all this time, it’s nice to see the comptroller finally doing what New Yorkers have needed most from him by joining us in asking the federal government for the meaningful support we desperately need as we continue to lead the nation in dealing with this national humanitarian crisis,” she added.
New York, Chicago team up to press feds for migrant-funding flexibility
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16.01.2024
NEW YORK — Leaders of large American cities have been begging the Biden administration for more money to house tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Southern border into the United States. Now two fiscal chiefs say they are actually being shortchanged by confusion over bureaucratic bookkeeping.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman joined forces to implore Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to loosen rules around collecting identification numbers given to migrants when they enter the U.S. In a written request sent to Mayorkas Friday and obtained by POLITICO via freedom-of-information request, the money managers say his agency only informed cities of the requirement to gather “A-numbers” in November, more than a year after migrants began arriving.
“Since the Spring of 2022, our cities have expended tremendous local resources to provide immediate shelter and care for tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants, filling in the gaps of a broken immigration........
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