Washington, D.C., has spent over $22 million in local funds to address the arrival of thousands of immigrants and asylum-seekers bused from southern border states.
Since the creation of the D.C. Office of Migrant Services, the office has maintained one full-time employee, NBC4 Washington reporter Mark Segraves said Tuesday.
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DC has spent more than $22 million in local funds addressing the migrant bus crises. Since opening DC Office of Migrant Services in September, OMS still only has 1 full time employee. @nbcwashington
— Mark Segraves (@SegravesNBC4) July 12, 2023
In the first four months of 2023, the district had already spent over $8 million to address the needs of immigrants who arrived from Texas and Arizona. The Lone Star State has bused almost 20,000 immigrants across the United States after launching the “border bus mission” in April 2022.
As of May, the immigrant crisis has cost the city $15.1 million in temporary housing, food, and other support services, the D.C. Department of Human Services said.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a state of emergency and announced the creation of the migrant services office in September 2022, beginning with an initial fund of $10 million. Bowser said at the time that the district would seek reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for all eligible services. In September last year, the city reported the arrival of almost 10,000 immigrants.
The Department of Human Services said in May that district officials had stopped putting immigrant families that arrived by bus from Texas and Arizona in hotels as temporary lodging due to a lack of space.
“As a result, new migrants coming into the District now have no option other than living on the street or receiving a ticket to somewhere else,” D.C. council member Robert C. White Jr. said during a May 2 council meeting. At that meeting, the council unanimously passed amendments to a law that aims to increase support for immigrants, including resettlement services.
Council member Janeese Lewis George at the time called the situation a “new housing crisis.”
“OMS continues the processing of arriving buses, helping to facilitate onward travel, and providing information and resources to those arriving in the District on buses and other modes of transportation,” the Department of Human Services previously said in a statement, adding that the pause in housing new migrants was “temporary.”
It is unclear at this time whether the department has restarted the housing process.
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As of May, there were 1,249 immigrants living in three hotels in Northeast Washington. The hotels have been used by the city since last summer as a stopgap against homelessness for those families, according to the human services department.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Bowser’s office and the Department of Human Services for comment.
