As hundreds of migrants pass through San Antonio each day, an over-capacity Migrant Resource Center (MRC) has expanded outside and into the parking lot, while the city is now sending migrants with scheduled flights to a facility at the San Antonio airport.
The $260,000-a-month, 50,000 square-foot, federally funded airport transfer center on the property at the San Antonio International Airport (SAT) opened in May to hold as many as 800 migrants with plane tickets for flights leaving in more than six hours.
This week, the city acknowledged that it had been operating the airport transfer center, or ATC, for months, with little public communication. The operational costs of the airport center include janitorial services and staffing of the center, reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the city said.
The optional waiting area, which has Wi-Fi and seating but no beds, was opened by the city to alleviate crowding at the airport. Inside, city employees provide migrants with food and water, plus hygiene and baby products. Some migrants are there for more than 24 hours, while others are there for shorter periods before being transported by bus to the terminal for their flights, the city said.
From Nov. 6 to Dec. 6, an average of 267 migrants a day used the ATC to wait for their flights, the city reported. During the same time period, an average of 33 migrants chose to wait daily in the airport terminal area.
The changes come as city officials and nonprofit partners are seeking to manage the sheer number of people stranded in San Antonio without onward travel plans, while stretching the last gasps of FEMA funds to pay for plane tickets to get migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to their destinations.
It is currently taking more than a week — and in some cases more than 15 days — for migrants to get plane tickets, said Antonio Fernandez, CEO of Catholic Charities, the nonprofit organization that took over day-to-day management of the MRC in July 2022.
More people are coming across the border daily, too, leading to an increase in migrant arrivals at the center, causing it to be more crowded than ever, he said.
Even after the addition of the airport facility, there are still upwards of 1,000 migrants staying at the resource center, located on San Pedro Avenue, each day.
According to data from Catholic Charities, 7,811 migrants arrived at the MRC during the week of September 24, a sharp increase from 5,205 arrivals just two weeks before.
As a result, officials decided to expand the MRC outside and into the parking lot on the property to increase capacity. The center sleeps about 650 to 700 a night, and the parking lot offers overnight accommodations for up to 500 more, Fernandez said.
“We were completely unprepared, and we had a lot of people in the parking lot,” Fernandez said. “We had to make a decision: Do we open the parking lot or do we close the gate because we don’t have enough space?”
Sleeping in the parking lot
At around 11 p.m. last Wednesday, four migrants from Venezuela between the ages of 11 and 19 slept in the MRC’s parking lot next to their mother, bundled under donated blankets.
It was 50 degrees outside, and it was their fourth night sleeping outside in chilly weather. Beside them and right outside the gates of the property, another Venezuelan family with children and teenagers slept on the ground, with one blanket beneath them and another keeping them warm.
That night, hundreds of migrants slept outside the center. Some slept sitting up in chairs, while others shivered under blue blankets as hundreds more migrants got off the buses that were still arriving at the center.
The line of chairs outside, where migrants sat waiting for their turn in the intake process, wrapped around the building.
“It’s a waiting terminal disguised as a refuge,” said a 42-year-old Venezuelan migrant, who wouldn’t identify himself.
For Fernandez’s part, he admits that the overcrowding has led to a decrease in the services the center can provide each person. In fact, there is currently a need for three times more blankets and more clothes.
“It’s a Centro de Bienvenida, but not the Centro de Bienvenida that I want,” he said. “But if we don’t do this, what will happen?”
On Tuesday, the city and Catholic Charities added a large white tent and two smaller blue tents to the MRC’s parking lot to provide shelter to the migrants sleeping there.
Fernandez said Catholic Charities opened the parking lot so that asylum-seekers could have access to portable bathrooms, water and food — though the center is now serving smaller portions of food than earlier this year.
Migrants mill around outside the gates looking for work, hoping to pay for plane tickets themselves. Those migrants are then asked to leave the center because working is not allowed, creating a higher number of people outside the property and near the North Towne Shopping Plaza.
Two weeks ago, Fernandez said 645 migrants left the parking lot on the property and moved to the shopping center seeking shelter from rain.
Due to the crowds, Fernandez said Catholic Charities added more security officers at the MRC, including two more police officers and about eight more staffers for intake in the parking lot.
Right now, the wait is about 24 hours to sleep inside the MRC, he said, and those who don’t wait to sleep inside are choosing instead to sleep in the parking lot or on the streets outside.
Fernandez said he’s instructed staffers to prioritize entry to people with infants, toddlers, pregnant women and people who are sick.
FEMA funding in question
Even with as much crowding as the center is seeing now, officials said the situation is going to worsen in 2024.
Although $5 million from FEMA is expected on Jan. 1, Fernandez said that sum is enough aid for migrants at the MRC, but it is not enough money to pay for plane or bus tickets to their next destination.
“Starting Jan. 7, let’s get ready, because without a way for these people to get out of San Antonio, we’re going to have thousands of people on the streets,” Fernandez said.
Catholic Charities is currently “stretching” what’s left of the $51 million in humanitarian relief funding it received from FEMA in 2023 , Fernandez said, adding that the nonprofit spent “over $1 million” each month to pay for migrants’ tickets, helping them get in and out of San Antonio within 24 to 48 hours.
The 2023 funding also covered salaries for staffers at the center, security officers, clothing, some food, contractors and transportation, Fernandez said. But with new arrivals increasing each day, Catholic Charities says it needs more than the $5 million expected at the beginning of the year.
Catholic Charities will stop buying migrants tickets starting Jan. 1, but will provide basic needs like food and clothing at the center. It will also decrease the number of staffers at the MRC and reduce as many expenses as it can, Fernandez said. With those changes, the MRC will not be at risk of closing, he said.
In a statement, the city said FEMA funding remains “uncertain.”
“We are continuing to request federal funding to continue operations in 2024,” stated city spokeswoman Laura Mayes. “The federal government has not passed its FY 24 budget, so funding for 2024 remains uncertain.”
The number of arrivals provided by Catholic Charities are higher than the city’s dashboard showing how many migrants are sheltered at the center, though the city did not explain why. In a statement, Fernandez said Catholic Charities counts every person at the MRC, sometimes multiple times a night.
“Last week was not easy, but it was not as difficult as the previous one, because the previous we had over 8,000 people [at the MRC] alone,” he said Monday, pointing to a graph showing the increase.
According to the city’s dashboard, 12,454 migrants have been sheltered overnight at the migrant resource center so far in December.
City of San Antonio Department of Human Services spokesman Roland Martinez said the city does not plan to open another Migrant Resource Center, but is currently exploring options in light of the reduced federal funding and rule changes for migrants at the border coming from the White House.
The city said how long it will help migrants depends on the “flow of migrants.”
According to the City of San Antonio’s dashboard, there have been 213,919 total migrant arrivals in the city between January 2023 and Thursday, and nearly half of that number has arrived since August.
Most are from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Others are from Haiti, Honduras and Colombia.
“[Right now,] 95% of people are from Venezuela — and they’re families,” Fernandez said about migrants passing through the MRC. “There are tons of families, babies, toddlers.”
Fernandez said he has tapped other nonprofits, like Haven for Hope, which aids people experiencing homelessness in San Antonio, for additional help for people sleeping outside the center, but “everyone is overwhelmed,” he said.
Migrants who leave the center and sleep outside the property say they depend on food people donate at the parking lot, even though such donations are not allowed by the city’s Department of Human Services. They use bathrooms at the McDonald’s across the street, if they can buy an item on the menu.
Some walk along San Pedro Avenue just to move or do something different other than wait. Others work with what they can to make money, like cutting hair for $20 or selling oranges out of plastic bags for $1.
On Wednesday, the city notified San Antonio residents via text that more than 200,000 migrants had migrated through San Antonio “in recent years” and experienced San Antonio’s compassionate hospitality.
“The migrant resource center needs supplies ASAP,” the text message said.
The San Antonio Food Bank said there haven’t been many donations earmarked for the Migrant Resource Center. Items needed include water, electrolytes, new socks and underwear, travel size hygiene items and nonperishable foods. Donors should communicate when giving that the items are for the MRC.
Donations can be made at the San Antonio Food Bank at 5200 Enrique M. Barrera Parkway or St. Stephen’s CARE Center at 2127 S. Zarzamora Street on Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
