What El Paso city officials are saying over community concerns of how the disaster declaration will affect them

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The City of El Paso submitted a total request of $40.2 million in federal funds for operations related to migrants, said Deputy City Manager Mario D'Agostino Sunday. City officials told ABC-7 they're still waiting on $25.8 million.

"The bottom line that the community needs to understand is that this is a national issue that we are having to deal with locally," said City spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta. "Much in the same way that the COVID pandemic struck our businesses in terms of manpower, we still see a lot of hiring around the community. And so it struck the nonprofit organizations much in the same way that it struck our business community."

El Pasoans are worried manpower will be taken from other services to help with services related to migrants. But the city said that's unlikely.

"In previous surges, what we saw is that we implemented a third party vendor who was able to supplement our staff with their shop. And so it didn't affect a lot of our facilities in terms of our recreation facilities," said Cruz-Acosta.

Still, the city doesn't know for sure what will happen. Cruz-Acosta said much of it depends on NGOs can provide and the numbers that Customs and Border Protection releases into the streets.

"It's a very fluid situation. And so the fluidity really doesn't exactly give us a lot of indication in terms of what's happening," said Cruz-Acosta.