The City of San Antonio on Thursday accepted its portion of $24.5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for its work with local nonprofits to continue aiding migrants traveling to and through San Antonio until September 2025.
The funding comes at the same time the city’s migrant resource center is working to manage the largest increase in migrant arrivals since January.
Council members on Thursday approved accepting the funds, but did not discuss the agenda item. Of the funding, the City of San Antonio will accept $13,051,737; Catholic Charities will get $5,688,925; and the United Way of San Antonio, which administers the FEMA emergency and shelter funding to local nonprofits, gets $5,795,360.
The federal allocation reimburses salaries, transportation costs and the lease to operate San Antonio’s migrant resource center along San Pedro Avenue, and will also fund other forms of migrant aid like meals, hotels and toiletries until Sept. 30, 2025.
Outside the migrant resource center Thursday, a number of migrants sat on the sidewalk in groups of two or three. Some wore shoes without shoelaces, having arrived on buses after recently being processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
This round of FEMA reimbursements is less than previous rounds, said Catholic Charities CEO Antonio Fernandez. The $5.6 million for Catholic Charities will go toward continuing operations at the MRC, he said, but it’s going to limit what they can do, including paying migrants’ onward travel as the number of arrivals rises.
“We’re going to have a huge increase of people at the Centro de Bienvenida,” Fernandez said. The number of migrants arriving at the center has gone up “almost every week” since July, he said.
Catholic Charities experienced its busiest week since January at the migrant resource center during the week of August 7, according to the nonprofit, with more than 4,600 migrants passing through the center in seven days.
San Antonio first got FEMA funding for the migrant resource center in June 2022, when the federal government turned away migrants, including those seeking asylum, under Title 42. The city and nonprofits had braced for an “influx” of migrants when Title 42 ended in May, but the reported numbers of migrants didn’t increase.
When setting up the shelter, the city spent $10.7 million in funds they requested to be reimbursed for in June 2022. The city, Catholic Charities and United Way have received multiple disbursements since then to aid migrants in San Antonio and manage the shelter.
That funding has covered coordination and response to migrants’ travel needs, including backpacks with basic hygiene products for migrants at the San Antonio International Airport and support services like counseling and case management.
In May, San Antonio received a total of $38 million from FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program to assist San Antonio’s humanitarian response to Title 42 ending. At the time, Catholic Charities got $31,955,232, the City of San Antonio got $4,692,492, and the United Way of San Antonio got $1,584,931.
Fernandez said with this funding round, Catholic Charities will have to prioritize covering travel costs families and pregnant women first. But that may cause an increase of people jammed at the center, which can only keep a total of 707 migrants overnight.
The United Way of San Antonio administers FEMA funds to the Food Bank, the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas and the Interfaith Welcome Coalition for migrant care, but did not confirm whether funds from this FEMA round would go toward those groups.
In an October 2022 interview, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the city and its nonprofit partners plan to operate the MRC until there is federal action on comprehensive immigration reform.
“Until that happens, as we see migrant flows come through our communities, we’re going to need an MRC,” Nirenberg said.
