KFOX 14
by Jhovani Carrillo
Thursday, September 15th 2022

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14) — Congresswoman Veronica Escobar said during a media briefing Thursday that the City of El Paso was offered about $1 million by the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year but the city turned it down.

She said the city could have used that money to create a system that would assist with the large flow of migrants that the city is seeing now.

The Department of Homeland Security(DHS) actually offered the City of El Paso about a million dollars a few months ago, you know, to begin to create a model that works off of what Brownsville, Texas is doing in order to make sure we avoid the situation that we see now," said Escobar. "The city didn't accept DHS's offer at the time.

When asked how she felt about the city's decision, she said, "My role is to make sure two things, we address the situation both legislatively, but also with the appropriations necessary so the laws and the money. As I mentioned, like on the House side, because we have enough Democrats in the House, we have been moving immigration legislation and there's more to come in order to increase legal pathways."

KFOX14 asked the city's spokeswoman about what Escobar said. She said the city didn't need the funding at that time.

"We never turned down the money, and it’s actually the same pot of money that we are dealing with right now. So the FEMA funding although it comes through DHS it’s actually the same pot of money," said Laura Cruz-Acosta.

Cruz-Acosta said the Office of Emergency Management and other city staff decided to not accept the money from DHS.

She said the city had already been going through a different process to get the funds.

“This one is upfront. But we, we have already been going through the FEMA channels and it was working very well and it’s continued to work very well," added Cruz-Acosta.

During a city council meeting earlier this week, the City of El Paso shared an update on how much it has spent to feed and house migrants.

According to the presentation, more than $300,000 was spent in the first week of September alone.

The entire months of July and August came in at around $500,000.

Compare that to $323,000 for the nine months leading up to this past June, and $408,000 for almost two years going back to 2019.

Even then, Acosta said the funding would not have changed the city's response to the current migrant situation.

"Same pot of money, different process and channels that it goes through. But it's still the same amount of money we would still have the same processes. We would still be in the same situation we are in right now," said Cruz-Acosta.