Phoenix on Tuesday approved a permit that will allow a coalition of migrant-aid organizations to open a shelter for asylum-seekers in a currently shuttered school.

The shelter likely will open in about 10 days in the old Ann Ott School, 1801 S. 12th St., said Paul Gilbert, an attorney representing the International Rescue Committee and other groups seeking the use permit.

“I am ecstatic,” Gilbert said. “We are so pleased with this overwhelmingly good decision.”

The permit dictates that outdoor activities at the shelter must occur between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., and that all vehicles transporting migrants must be loaded and unloaded on facility grounds.

The Phoenix Planning Commission will hold another hearing in one year to review operations at the shelter and ensure that the aid organizations operating the shelter have worked to ease neighborhood concerns about traffic and other issues.

Neighborhood opposition focuses on traffic

Most of the approximately 70 people who filled the City Hall room for the hearing were in favor of the shelter, but a small group of residents who live near Ann Ott School, which closed in 2007, opposed the plan.

Carlos Avila, speaking as a representative of the Nuestro Barrio Unidas Neighborhood Association, said the shelter would hurt a community already hollowed out by Phoenix's program to relocate the neighborhood's families who were affected by noise from nearby Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Avila said many neighbors weren’t aware of the plan to turn the school into a shelter in time to voice concerns, which mainly center around traffic.

“It is a need, but why should the community have to take on another burden?” Avila said.

Nicolas Cortez, a resident of the neighborhood where the shelter will open, said he did not oppose the shelter, but he lamented what he said was a lack of transparency in the planning process.

“You’re overcrowded, you’re desperate, and in your desperation, you forgot to think about what’s going on in my community,” Cortez said. “We’re desperate, too.”

Gilbert said members of the International Rescue Committee canvassed the sparsely populated neighborhood using a list of addresses given to them by Phoenix officials. They tried to gauge the support of residents, almost all of whom said they were in support of the project, which he argued will improve the neighborhood by ensuring the school doesn’t fall into disrepair.

Still, Gilbert said, the International Rescue Committee and other humanitarian groups that will run the shelter are committed to ensuring that neighbors’ concerns are addressed and that the neighbors are included in the planning process.

“We will reach out to you, we’ll spend whatever time you want after this meeting,” Gilbert said to the neighbors. “Let’s talk. Transparency is what we’re all about. I think we’ve been very transparent. We want to continue that.”

School-turned-shelter can hold up to 300 people

The permit states that the school-turned-shelter can hold up to 300 people at a time. The migrant families will not leave the property's grounds unless escorted, and the International Rescue Committee plans to provide security 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to the permit.

ICE will drop off migrant families in vans or buses within the school's fenced-in property between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., the use permit says. Gilbert estimated one to three ICE buses will drop people off at the shelter daily.

At the shelter, volunteers from IRC and a coalition of grassroots groups, nonprofit organizations and religious organizations will provide migrant families with meals, assistance booking travel arrangements to their U.S. destinations, basic health screenings and first aid, and referrals for legal and educational services.

The shelter will serve as Phoenix’s first centralized drop-off area for asylum-seekers released by federal agencies into the city.

Local churches that have accepted migrants from ICE at times have reached capacity, prompting ICE to drop people leaving the agency’s custody outside of Greyhound bus stations in the area.

That occasional practice, immigrant-rights organizations say, is dangerous when summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees.

Because the migrants don’t have bus tickets when they are dropped off, Greyhound station management doesn’t allow them to wait in the air-conditioned station.

“The scale has dramatically increased of the number of people who are coming in 2019,” Gilbert said. “Simply put, the existing community networks are no longer sufficient to meet the full-scale need of this group. These challenges are particularly prominent in Phoenix, where unlike Tucson and Yuma, there is no consistent staging facility for ICE and (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) to depend on each day. We will help fill that very pronounced gap and vacuum.”

Before the facility can open, the groups operating the shelter need to fix some electrical issues to get the school up to code.

The coalition will rent the building from the Phoenix Elementary School District, which Gilbert said will share some of the coalition’s costs for rehabbing the building.