McALLEN — In a request to Gov. Greg Abbott, the city of McAllen on Friday officially asked to be reimbursed $530,000 it spent on humanitarian aid during the surge of Central American immigrants over the past three years, both state and city officials confirmed.
The reimbursement being sought is federal money that U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, arranged for the city to receive last year, but the funds were never disbursed because of confusion by federal agencies over whether McAllen was eligible for the aid.
Abbott’s office said last week during the governor’s campaign stop here that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had initially told the governor’s office that McAllen was not eligible for the funds that Cuellar got Congress to appropriate. Then FEMA did an about-face last week and said the city could receive the funds.
After a confirmation last week that McAllen is eligible for the reimbursement through FEMA, Abbott’s office created what city officials saw as another hurdle this week: It would not allow the application to be submitted electronically, so the city shipped the application through an overnight carrier on Thursday. Abbott’s office confirmed it received the application on Friday.
“What year are we in?” City Manager Roel “Roy” Rodriguez said, citing another perceived obstacle Abbott has thrown at the city to get reimbursed for “a federal problem.”
Immigration spiked in 2014 and the following summer it became a national conversation. But the immigration surge didn’t slow down until earlier this year. As of June 2014, McAllen has provided support to 73,315 individuals, and more than 23,528 overnight guests, according to the application sent to Abbott’s office, obtained by The Monitor. They are typically cared for at the Respite Center at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
However, the standard protocol is that when immigrants arrive at the church, they are dropped off by Border Patrol after they are apprehended upon their initial illegal crossing. Therefore, these people are here legally, with a day in immigration court at a later date.
Cuellar, the Laredo Democrat who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, has worked to get McAllen reimbursed since 2014. Questions have been raised if the city can be reimbursed for money spent in a previous fiscal year.
“Yes they can,” Cuellar said in an interview on Thursday. “The way I wrote the language, it’s actually part of a law. In appropriations we can either instruct an agency or we can change the law. And I actually changed the law. And this is the law. I specifically, in 2014, got the language in there to make sure this money could go to border communities for reimbursement for things like this. It should be a very, very easy thing to do.”
State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, has been working with Cuellar to get the city reimbursed.
“If the governor wants to do it, it can be done,” Hinojosa said in an interview on Friday. “I’m sure, and I’m just speculating, that he’s getting some push back from certain groups that are very much anti-immigrant. But it’s not fair to the local community and taxpayers who have taken the burden. Quite frankly, Gov. Abbott has the funds — and I know, I’m vice chair of finance. The money is there.”
