FEMA's Role in Migrant Assistance: Exploring the Shelter and Services Program
When local communities receive new immigrants who have been released at the border by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they often provide necessary support to ensure that people have their immediate and short-term emergency needs (such as food and temporary shelter) met. Over the last decade, as large numbers of asylum seekers began arriving at the border and were released by DHS to await court hearings inside the country, local communities have stepped up to ensure that migrants are not forced to sleep on the streets after arriving.
Since 2019, Congress has provided a limited pool of funding that local and state governments, as well as nonprofits, can apply for to reimburse some costs of emergency sheltering needs. This funding is currently provided through the Shelter and Services Program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA). The Shelter and Services Program is one of many such programs administered by FEMA, which carries out numerous functions beyond its core mission of disaster relief. Throughout its existence, the program has received bipartisan support from members of Congress and from local leaders who have called on the federal government to provide more financial assistance to communities both at the border and around the country that receive new immigrants. . . .
In 2018 and 2019, migrants again began arriving at the border in very high numbers, with over 850,000 Border Patrol apprehensions recorded in Fiscal Year 2019. In many communities, city officials and migrant shelter operators worked with law enforcement partners at DHS to ensure that migrants would be released directly to shelters. These shelters served a vital role in limiting the impact on border communities and providing a better procedure for the federal government when releases occur. However, ensuring that ensuring that asylum seekers without support systems in the U.S. do not end up homeless in their first hours in the United States can come at significant costs to local governments and to the shelters themselves, a concern which Congress eventually sought to address.
In the July 2019 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Humanitarian Assistance and Security at the Southern Border Act, Congress first authorized the federal government to reimburse some of those costs. The initial funding was operated through FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP), which has operated since 1983, to disburse funding to local communities responding to the shelter needs of homeless residents. The creation of reimbursement funding for border communities received bipartisan support, including by Texas Senator John Cornyn, who declared in August 2019 that "it's high time the federal government repays the Texas communities that have diverted their local taxpayers' funds to address this crisis."
