‘It’s inhumane’: Undocumented immigrants ineligible for COVID funeral reimbursement
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
After Claudia Medina’s husband died from COVID-19 in late March, she was left with a $14,000 bill for his funeral expenses. Pedro Cruz Mendoza was an undocumented immigrant from Oaxaca who worked in the Central Valley’s fields for 21 years.
Medina, a 50-year-old from Mexico City who also is not authorized to live or work in the United States, didn’t know how she would cover those costs. Like many other low-wage workers in the Central Valley, Medina lives paycheck to paycheck.
“I didn’t know what to do — where was I going to get that much money?” she said in Spanish. “I asked God to help me find the strength to raise the money.”
Many Latino immigrants continued working on the front lines during the pandemic, contracting COVID-19 and dying of the virus at disproportionate rates. The resulting medical and funeral bills have become an additional burden to families already struggling to make ends meet.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency launched a program in April that provide reimbursements of up to $9,000 for funeral expenses related to COVID-19. Citizens and some legal immigrants — including American citizens born outside of the U.S. or in a U.S. territory, permanent residents and asylum seekers or refugees — who incurred funeral expenses after January 20, 2020 are eligible to apply. They are permitted to seek help covering the burial costs of undocumented family members.
But FEMA guidelines largely prevent undocumented immigrants from applying to receive disaster relief funds. Instead, the agency encourages undocumented families to seek other sources of financial support, through non-profit and community-based organizations.
Some California lawmakers and advocates say generally excluding undocumented people from applying for assistance to cover the funeral costs of their adult family members only hurts a population already disproportionately devastated, both physically and financially, by the pandemic.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are about 2.6 million undocumented people in California, and more than three quarters are from Mexico or Central America.
“It’s inhumane to deny a life-saving service or any type of service in an emergency situation to a person just because they are undocumented,” said Miriam Mesa, director of community education at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which advocates for the rights of immigrants and refugees.
“(Undocumented immigrants) are the ones who’ve been suffering the most because they are the ones who have less means to face a crisis like this,” she said. “And they are the ones who are really putting themselves in danger on a day-to-day basis. This is more than unfair.”
Assemblymember Joaquin Aramabula, a Democrat whose district encompasses a large swath of Fresno County, said FEMA’s program is “well-intentioned but doesn’t go far enough.”
“We must include any eligible low-income family, regardless of immigration status,” Arambula said in a statement to The Bee. “So many of our farmworkers and other essential workers have put their lives at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep the rest of us fed and our economy going, placing a heavy burden on these workers.”
Undocumented Californians could get relief under state bill
A bill moving through the California legislature could help close this gap for some undocumented families.
Assembly Bill 868 would create a state-funded assistance program to reimburse low-income families for funeral expenses when a relative’s death is directly caused by a declared state of emergency. The program would offer relief to Californians “regardless of documentation status, including vulnerable, heavily impacted populations left out of FEMA’s COVID-19 funeral assistance,” according to the bill.
The bill currently awaits a vote in the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee.
“Our local community has been devastated by this pandemic and we wanted to find a way to assist struggling families experiencing the loss of a loved one and in some cases numerous loved ones,” bill author Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat representing parts of Riverside and Imperial counties, said in a statement.
“It became important for us to ensure that our proposal filled gaps for vulnerable, heavily-impacted populations in need of this aid but who might not be eligible under FEMA,” he added.
Arambula said he supports AB 868. He said too many undocumented families have lost their “fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and others to this awful virus.”
“We also know the pandemic has disproportionately afflicted and killed Latinos and other ethnic minorities, casting an ugly spotlight on the disparities in our healthcare system,” he added.
Assemblymember Devon Mathis, a Republican representing portions of Tulare, Kern and Inyo counties, also supports the bill. He is planning to joint-author the bill, according to Justin Boman, Mathis’ chief of staff.
“In these rare and unprecedented times, it is vital for the government to more readily provide for the constituents in their charge,” Mathis said in a statement.
“This pandemic has resulted in terrible losses felt across the state, especially within many of our disadvantaged and immigrant communities of color,” he said. “California must step up to assist our friends and neighbors as we all recover from this pandemic, and prepare for any future ones. I am honored to support my colleague in his efforts.”
‘Largest number’ of funeral assistance requests in FEMA history
Beyond issues of documentation, families could face other challenges accessing FEMA’s funeral assistance.
The only way to request the funds is by calling an agency phone line. That was the “fastest way” to launch the program, FEMA spokesperson Daniel Llargués said, adding, “developing a new online application would have delayed the launch of the program for several more months.”
But within the first 90 minutes of the program’s launch, the call center received nearly one million calls. The “huge” volume of calls, he said, caused technical issues and jammed phone lines.
“This is the largest number of funeral assistance applications in the agency’s history,” he added. “We are working to manage those calls, and to increase our call center capabilities. ”
The agency has received more than 157,600 funeral assistance applications and awarded more than $4.8 million in funds to eligible families as of May 3, Llargués said.
Advocate: Blocking aid for some ‘really not the American way’
Following Cruz Mendoza’s death, Medina said paying off her regular expenses became more daunting. She said she had accrued some savings over the years, but not nearly enough to cover all of his funeral expenses.
As Medina grieved her husband of 39 years, her bills started to pile up. On top of that, she and her family had to get creative to pay the funeral expenses. She used her tax returns and relied on friends and family for help.
The farmworking community in the Kings County city of Lemoore, where she’s lived for 20 years, rallied together to raise money for the funeral. The family started a GoFundMe campaign; her son Juan held a local car wash and sold t-shirts and other clothing to neighbors; and her son’s mother-in-law dropped off donation boxes at stores. Friends and community members she hadn’t spoken to in years, including her son’s former high school teachers, also pitched in. A close friend loaned Medina $5,000 and her co-workers donated part of their paychecks.
Medina said she was grateful her community contributed to the burial and funeral costs.
“A lot of people have helped us,” Medina said. “I am incredibly grateful with all my heart that they have helped and supported me through this moment.”
Juan Carlos Tafolla, a team lead with the Kings County-based nonprofit Valley Voices, which works with immigrant families in the Central Valley, helped Medina navigate the FEMA application process.
She did not qualify for a reimbursement, he said, because all of the funeral costs were under her name.
“The heartbreaking part is that everyone’s suffering equally, yet some are eligible and others aren’t,” he said. “Here are families contributing to America by doing the work that other Americans don’t want to do, putting food on the table, bearing with horrible working conditions and… then they’re left to hang out to dry as if they’re expendable. That’s really not the American way.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 5:00 AM.