City manager says 'organized effort' brings asylum seekers to Sanford, Maine

SANFORD, Maine — A driver in a van pulled into the parking lot at Sanford City Hall and told a local official that he was from DoorDash, the popular food delivery service. Ten people get out of the van. The person at the wheel drives off.

Sanford City Manager Steven Buck shared this incident with the public during the City Council’s emergency meeting on May 9. According to Buck, the story is just one instance of many in which more than 100 asylum seekers from Angola have arrived in Sanford, “vanload after vanload after vanload,” to seek help with their basic needs.

The influx is occurring at a time when lodging and housing in Sanford are already so beyond capacity that even the city’s new fire chief is finding it difficult to find a place to live in the community, as Mayor Becky Brink put it during the meeting.

The situation has swamped the city’s General Assistance Office, where staff has been working well beyond regular business hours to fulfill its responsibilities to the asylum seekers.

“We’re tapped,” Buck said. “We’re up. We have hit capacities that our staff can no longer keep up with. We’ve been overrun. And the organized effort continues to bring vans and buses of people here.”

Previous story: 100 asylum seekers arrive in Sanford seeking help

City Councilor Jonathan Martell said the asylum seekers who are being brought to Sanford under the false promise of benefits and services are being put in a “horrific situation.”

“This is essentially human trafficking,” Martell said. “Any decent human being wouldn’t drop off an animal where it wasn’t able to obtain basic needs, let alone people.”

Buck said he has learned the names of at least two individuals who have been actively recruiting asylum seekers at the Portland Expo to come to Sanford. He did not give their names, as he said he was still learning more about the situation.

“I’ve also learned that there’s a number of charitable and faith-based organizations that have actively recruited and picked up asylum seekers, brought them here to our community, and housed them temporarily,” Buck added. “Those resources are running out, and now they’re being turned out to the city to provide General Assistance.”

As a political subdivision in Maine, Sanford is mandated by state law to provide General Assistance benefits to those who qualify, Buck said. Turning away eligible individuals is not an option, he added.

“There are some very stringent regulations that surround that,” Buck said.

Buck provided statistics that were a few days old that showed that more than 100 asylum seekers had arrived in Sanford since the end of April. The city has provided temporary housing to as many as 25 families, he said. The Sanford School Department has enrolled more than 20 young asylum seekers as students.

Asylum seekers who have registered for General Assistance in another municipality are disqualified from receiving it in Sanford, Buck said. Many asylum seekers who already had secured assistance in Portland, he said, needed to return there.

The General Assistance Office has been cross-checking with other communities, as some seekers have indicated that they have left housing that they already had in hopes of pursuing benefits in Sanford, according to Buck. Those who leave housing voluntarily are disqualified for General Assistance.

Buck said appointments have been made for seekers to file for weekly benefits for basic needs. Housing is provided weekly under a 30-day period, with the understanding that local hotels are not obligated to provide spaces, he added.

“Thirty days from now, the circumstances change – dramatically,” Buck said.

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Buck said the city’s General Assistance Office has been provided with additional staff support. Employees in other departments at City Hall also have chipped in to help, he added.

The city also continues to work and meet with numerous agencies and organizations throughout the region, Buck said.

Buck hinted at the work volume in the weeks ahead when he said that applying for General Assistance is not a one-time process.

“It’s weekly,” he said. “Continuous and rolling.”

Buck and others urged residents not to act individually in helping the asylum seekers receive their basic needs. Buck said people need to help the asylum seekers through an organized process involving existing systems and channels.

“Don’t let your help become a burden,” Buck said. “I’m seeing that consistently in this situation: help is becoming a burden. It’s not coordinated.”

City Councilor Ayn Hanselmann agreed.

“There are times when providing help is, in fact, not helpful,” Hanselmann said. “That’s a really hard, hard thing to get our hands around. But there are times, when that help takes people out of a structure and out of a process, which actually hurts them in the long term.”

Anyone who wants to donate, or volunteer should go through agencies with which the city is partnering – ones such as The Corner Cupboard and Beloved, for example, officials said. Buck said a complete listing of organizations and roles that need filling can be found on the city’s website and its Facebook page.

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Services for asylum seekers take toll on city budget, leaders say

While the financial cost of helping the asylum seekers is not yet known, Buck provided a glimpse of the current status of the city’s General Assistance budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

The city had budgeted $155,000 for the non-contract services it provides through General Assistance, according to Buck. Year to date, the city has spent $483,724.

“Expenses have exceeded budget by $328,000,” Buck said. “And there’s eight weeks remaining in the fiscal year."

Year to date, the city has collected revenues of $247,437 from the state, Buck added.

Buck added that the state reimburses the city for 70% of direct costs related to General Assistance. Money that Sanford puts into administering its General Assistance program is not reimbursable by the state. Nor are costs such as those related to the staff allocated for addressing the influx of asylum seekers, Buck added.

Buck said he was expecting to meet with representatives of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to discuss the asylum-seeker situation on Wednesday. He said his efforts to communicate his concerns to Gov. Janet Mills on Tuesday took him three hours and involved working through aides.

“Sometimes the state of Maine is our most difficult partner,” he said.

Sanford residents air concerns at emergency meeting

Members of the public spoke during the meeting and expressed concerns about health and safety, about the individuals bringing the asylum seekers to Sanford, and about the need to help city residents with their needs. Others spoke of their experiences in working with others to help the asylum seekers.

Buck said he has gotten a lot of voicemails at his office from individuals who are angry about the expenditures for dealing with the crisis and about how they feel the city is not doing enough to address the situation. Most of the callers are from out of town, Buck noted.

Buck rejected any assertion the city is not doing enough.

“I can’t accept that,” he said. “We are doing everything in our physical capacity to meet the needs and meet the letter of the law.”

Buck said he is angry with the federal government.

“The individuals we’re dealing with didn’t cross the border illegally,” he said. “They’re federally documented. They’re immigrated. They’re in the process. They’re legally asylum seekers ... But there’s a volume now that our country isn’t able to handle. That’s the concern. We’re at the tail end of that.”

Buck said interacting with the asylum seekers has helped him as he has worked through the challenging, bureaucratic aspects of the situation. He suggested they would not have made it to the United States if they were not creative and highly intelligent.

“These are hardworking people,” Buck said. “They had incredibly difficult situations and circumstances to get here.”

Buck also said he noticed how “universal children are.” He shared a story about a local police officer playing “Baby Shark” on a cell phone with a child no older than 5 or 6 years old.

“For me, dealing with the human side of this helps me deal with what’s taking place here,” he said.

Buck urged members of the public to contact their state senators and representatives in Augusta and Maine’s U.S. legislators in Washington and share their concerns about how certain laws and procedures may need to be changed and improved to better address situations like the current one in Sanford.

“Don’t be silent,” he said. “As a city manager, they hear me all the time. But when you the voters speak to them, it has far more meaning.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Sanford ME manager: Asylum seekers arrive via 'organized effort'