Asylum Seekers To Move From Tucson Monastery To Detention Center

TUCSON, AZ — Central American migrants who are seeking asylum will be moved from the former Benedictine Monastery in midtown Tucson to three unused buildings at the Pima County juvenile detention center, county officials have said. Authorities near the southern U.S. border are scrambling to find housing for the asylum-seeking migrants while their cases are being heard in immigration courts.

The Arizona Daily Star said in a Monday report that the detention center could immediately be used as a dorm-like shelter that would house 150 to 200 people. It was not immediately clear when the transfer would take place.

Catholic Community Services has been running the day-to-day operations at the former monastery, but it will close at the end of the month, Tucson Bishop Edward Weisenburger wrote in a letter to city and county officials. He cited a “moral imperative” to open a new shelter.

“There is no sign that the [Department of Homeland Security] drop-offs of asylum seekers, primarily from Central America, is going to abate,” he wrote. “If the Tucson and Pima County community do not respond and provide aid to these desperate people then they will be left on the streets of Tucson to fend for themselves. We have no choice but to provide the much-needed aid, which is a moral imperative of our faith.”

Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik told the newspaper that although the migrants will be held at the juvenile detention center, they’re not considered detainees and the doors will remain unlocked. They’ll also have around-the-clock access to medical care and commercial kitchen and laundry facilities, the report said.

» Read the complete story on the Arizona Daily Star.