At the end of June, Erie County said 120 migrants from New York City were staying at a Cheektowaga hotel.

Jericho Road Community Health Center chief program officer Anna Mongo says buses have continued to arrive from downstate over the last three weeks, as the number has risen to well over 400.

"Right now we're sort of holding until we can fully feel organized and comfortable with the amount that we have,” Mongo said. “Because even with having a couple days in between, it's a lot of people in a short amount of time."

Mongo says a small number of those asylum seekers have already moved elsewhere. The remainder are living in three hotels in roughly the same area for now.          

"Right now has been primarily about emergency response and making sure everybody is safe, secure and healthy,” she said. “The next step will be more long-term case management."

A spokesperson for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz deferred questions about the migrant population to the New York City Mayor's Office. The office confirmed more than 400 people have traveled to Erie County and says it has spent more than $1.45 billion total on the "crisis," but did not have specific subcontractor breakdowns readily available.

Mongo says Jericho Road and other organizations are being compensated for their work through private contractor DocGo.

"For what's happening in the hotels right now, it's an hourly rate and a fee for service contract with DocGo,” she said.

Mongo acknowledges that it’s a significant addition to the organization's already busy caseload.

"We're currently in the process of staffing up,” she said. “So right now we've been using our existing staff to cover and to help me continue to do that until I'm able to hire new staff, get them trained."

She says while the first groups or asylum seekers to arrive were primarily individuals, the later groups have included families as well. However, she doesn't expect local school districts to be overwhelmed in the fall by waves of new students who don't speak English as a first language. 

"At this point, there's very few if any school-aged kids,” Mongo said.

She says the migrants in Erie County speak roughly 15 or 16 different languages, with Spanish probably being the largest representation and French as another unifying language.

Mongo says she's looking forward to getting to the second phase of services, which will include connecting people with primary care, job placement, immigration processing and permanent homes.

Mongo says Jericho Road has also received a $3.5 million grant over two years from New York state as part of a separate strategy to help migrants find places to live.