EL PASO, Texas – As El Paso County continues to grapple with a surge of migrants crossing the southern border, a candidate for county judge said the government shouldn’t use local tax dollars to “process federal failures.”
“The federal government must secure our border,” said Guadalupe Giner, who is running as an Independent. “They put this burden on El Paso County. And for whatever reason, the county has decided to open a processing center.”
The El Paso County Commissioners Court approved a $6.8 million contract in September to open a new migrant support center near the airport. It will be similar to the city-operated Migrant Welcome Center, which currently helps up to 400 migrants a day coordinate travel to other cities, putting many on buses to New York City or Chicago.
The county hopes its processing center will be up and running by early October.
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Guadalupe Giner is running for El Paso County Judge. She is critical of the county’s handling of the migrant crisis, saying officials shouldn’t use local tax dollars to fix federal failures.
(Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News)
“We’re taking money out of local taxpayer hands and putting it into something that the federal government should be paying for,” Giner told Fox News.
El Paso County Chief Administrator Betsy Keller said in a County Commissioners Court meeting Sept. 19 that the county expects to “receive all funding through FEMA” for the processing center. But the county will have to pay upfront because FEMA reimburses on a quarterly basis, Keller said.
“If at any point those funds are no longer available, we would immediately come back and notify the court and work to draw down our operations if that’s what the court wants,” she said.
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Giner said she is skeptical local taxpayers won’t end up on the hook, especially if the influx of migrants…
Source : foxnews
