The center where asylum-seekers who need help navigating the San Antonio International Airport on their way to other destinations is shutting down only a week after the city received almost $18 million in federal funding for migrant aid.
City Manager Erik Walsh told City Council members on Friday that the city plans to close the transfer center at the airport where migrants with airline tickets have been assisted since December.
The closure comes as the number of migrants relying on the center has dropped, Walsh stated in his memo to the council and Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
“As arrivals along the Texas border have declined between December 2023 to March 2024, staff has seen a 77 percent decrease in asylum seekers transiting through San Antonio to complete onward travel,” Walsh wrote in the memo provided to the San Antonio Report.
The welcoming and navigation assistance currently provided at the airport will be relocated to the Migrant Resource Center (MRC) on San Pedro Avenue starting May 1, Walsh stated.
The temporary contract employees who work at the on-site transfer center already have been notified that their jobs would end April 30. That news saddened some volunteers at the center, who say the employees’ assistance was invaluable to non-English-speaking migrants who’ve struggled to navigate the airport’s ticketing machines and interact with airport staff.
Airport spokeswoman Tonya Hope confirmed earlier this week that the transfer center was set to be downsized, but said she had no other information.
The Interfaith Welcome Coalition, a charitable organization with volunteers who also assist migrants at the airport, reported assisting 110 migrants as they navigated air travel during the month of March.
The city also plans to reduce police presence at the MRC entry gate and at the airport due to a drop in arrivals, Walsh said.
City staff told the council in March that some cost-saving measures were being put into motion to stretch their dwindling federal funding. At the time, it wasn’t clear whether Congress would come together on a spending agreement.
Last week, city officials said the latest round of funding of $17.8 million for migrant aid, announced by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar on April 12, would go toward the MRC, a holding facility near the airport and feeding migrants while they’re in San Antonio.
Along with the allocation, the federal government granted local officials’ request to get rid of the limits on how much of the funding can be spent on travel fare for migrants.
But federal money for migrant aid is spread thinner than ever, as cities across the nation apply for grants that were once aimed just at border communities.
FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP) took a 20% cut from the previous fiscal year as some lawmakers in Washington D.C., including Cuellar, questioned whether the migrant aid is drawing more migrants in.
San Antonio leaders wrote to Congress in December that the community would need roughly $57 million to keep its migrant aid going this year, and roughly half of SSP’s $650 million for 2024 has already been allocated in the first round.
Walsh said in his letter that the city would request about $18.8 million in the next tranche of SSP allocations to fund the city’s migrant assistance operations through the end of the grant term on September 30, 2026.
Walsh stated that the city plans to coordinate with federal and nonprofit partners to monitor border crossing activity “and prepare for expansion of local operational services should an increase of arrivals in San Antonio be anticipated.”
The San Antonio community has received a total of roughly $139 million from the federal government for immigration-related work since January 2021. During that time, an estimated 600,000 migrants have passed through the city, often on their way to sponsors in other cities, according to the City of San Antonio.
