United Way of Southern Maine awarded $5.4M to support asylum seekers
The United Way of Southern Maine is slated to receive $5.4 million in federal funds to support Maine communities that are providing food, shelter, clothing, acute medical care and transportation for asylum seekers.
The support will aid people recently released from U.S. Department of Homeland Security custody who are awaiting immigration court proceedings.
“Our community’s most vulnerable members face the interconnected challenges of food insecurity, housing instability, and lack of transportation," said Liz Cotter Schlax, president and CEO of United Way of Southern Maine.
The Department of Homeland Security is allocating the money through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to a news release.
“This funding is critical to providing the necessary support as they begin to build new lives in our state,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine 1st District.
FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program is the only federal funding available to help local governments and nonprofits supporting new arrivals.
The money is part of a $380 million nationwide allocation.
Expanded eligibility sought
Pingree, along with U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has pushed to expand the eligibility period for Shelter and Services Program aid, which currently limits support to asylum seekers for only 45 days after their release from Department of Homeland Security custody.
Maine cities and organizations have been unable to access federal funding to house asylum seekers because of the Shelter and Services Program requirements, Pingree said last fall.
At the time, Pingree called attention to the challenges Portland is facing to house asylum seekers in a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.
“In 2023, the city of Portland has already spent approximately $500,000 housing asylum seekers at the now-closed Portland Expo Center shelter and anticipates spending an additional $500,000 housing 192 asylum seekers in hotels going forward,” Pingree wrote.
The requirement that funds may only be used to provide services to noncitizen migrants within 45 days of their release from DHS custody is unworkable for destination cities, she wrote.
“Portland, like many other northern cities, is the last stop for many asylum seekers once they are released from DHS custody,” she said.
Without secondary placement options, she continued, asylum seekers face longer stays in shelters that cannot be supported by the program because they exceed the 45-day limit. Most asylum seekers, she said, arrive in Portland within five to eight days of their release from custody, reducing the time that their stay in shelters can be supported by the program.
“Additionally, enforcing the 45-day limit would be nearly impossible to administer,” she continued. “Nonprofits would be forced either to send people to the streets after their stay has exceeded 45 total days or implement an unreasonably complex and expensive tracking system to monitor which individuals are funded by SSP and which are not.”
Pingree also said that FEMA’s requirement to collect and maintain a database of registration numbers for asylum seekers is “operationally unwieldy and antithetical to the mission of many potential subgrantees.”
A year ago, Pingree urged increased federal funding for shelters and other services in Maine and across the country.
“You may not realize this, but Portland, Maine, is actually a major destination for asylum seekers entering this country,” she said at the time.
In a separate release, the Department of Homeland Security said its $380 Million to communities that receive migrants was an “unprecedented” resource to support border and interior communities.
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