San Antonio has requested $57.7 million from the federal government to continue helping migrants move through the city on their way to other destinations in 2024.
If the city can’t get what it needs from a funding agreement currently being hashed out in Washington, D.C., local officials could soon have to decide whether to scale back their efforts or use local funds to keep them going.
Thursday’s City Council meeting aimed to gauge support for using local funding for migrant aid, and if not, to begin considering what a scaled-back migrant operation might look like.
“We are in the middle of — you can’t ignore it — a political vortex of our country right now, and there seem to be folks that would rather thrive in chaos than help us deal with the issue,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said of congressional gridlock over spending.
“What I would ask everyone to consider, however, is in lieu of those [federal] resources, what is the alternative?”
Congress is quickly approaching its deadline to approve a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which funds the Federal Emergency Management Agency grants that have paid for San Antonio and other cities’ migrants efforts across the country.
Feuding lawmakers haven’t been able to come together on such a plan since Republicans took control of the House in 2023, and federal money already approved to fund cities’ migrant aid through 2025 is already drying up.
All across the country cities are considering whether to fund migrant aid themselves or scale back their efforts. Last month Denver, which has received 40,000 migrants in the past year, elected to do both.
Up until now, San Antonio’s approach to addressing the 600,000 migrants that have passed through the city since 2021 has been to help them along their journey, providing a temporary place for them to stay until they travel on to friends and family in other cities.
City staff says San Antonio and its partner nonprofits have enough money to keep operating the Migrant Resource Center (MRC) on San Pedro Avenue and transit center near the airport through fall of this year. Money to provide migrants with travel fare has already run out.
Running the numbers
Migrants stranded without family or another sponsor have limited options to support themselves while awaiting their asylum cases — a big part of the reason San Antonio has focused on helping them continue their journey.
Asylum cases that are supposed to take months have been taking upwards of five years, during which time migrants aren’t legally authorized to work.
For that reason, much of Thursday’s council discussion weighed the value to the community of the efforts to keep migrants moving versus the potential long-term cost of migrants who might decide to remain in San Antonio.
Assistant City Manager Lori Houston opened the discussion by laying out what’s left of the federal funding.
The city currently pays for the lease, security and janitorial personnel at the MRC and the transport center, and has about $10.5 million left from the last tranche of FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program. That money will last through September of this year, Houston said.
Catholic Charities, which runs the migrant resource center and previously purchased travel fare for migrants, will exhaust its funding by December. Private donors are currently being tapped to provide tickets for migrants who can’t afford them because new restrictions on the FEMA money limits how much can go toward that use.
Many other groups, including the San Antonio Food Bank, United Way, the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, Corazon Ministries and the Episcopal Diocese have also been receiving federal money for their efforts feeding, sheltering and transporting migrants.
The number of migrants coming through the city has been low in recent months, but the mayor’s Dec. 13 letter to members of Congress laid out what leaders expect to need over the course of this year.
It asked for $54.5 million for Catholic Charities to fund travel fare for migrants, case management and security for the MRC. Another $3 million was requested to cover the city’s lease on the MRC, janitorial services, police overtime and local transportation of migrants.
If funding doesn’t continue, Houston’s presentation said the city could try to reduce operation costs at the MRC and transfer center, or try to fund it through the city’s general operating budget. The city also could pull some federal pandemic relief money intended for other projects or try to tap into reserve FEMA funding.
Deputy City Manager María Villagómez said the city has already started the process of reducing staff at the MRC and airport transport center to save money.
Council’s response
After the meeting, City Manager Erik Walsh said he didn’t hear consensus from the City Council about a desire to use local funding for migrant efforts if federal money runs out.
“I heard no clear direction to use local dollars here today, nor would I recommend that at this point,” he told reporters. “We have federal dollars. … We’re going to continue to push the federal government.”
Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) said he didn’t want to see taxpayer dollars spent on migrant aid.
Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) said she had “a real concern” about the idea.
“Having said that … If this money dries up. It’s got to come from somewhere,” she added. “I think that when we say we don’t want to spend city dollars on anyone other than San Antonians, I do believe that the city dollars are also being spent on San Antonians by helping the MRC.”
Councilman John Courage (D9) said the city already spends $75 million per year on its roughly 3,000 homeless residents. Increasing those numbers to include asylum seekers would be unsustainable, he reasoned.
“Yes, federal government is our main partner financially, but it may end up being up to us,” Courage said. “The MRC is actually saving the city millions of taxpayer dollars because we put it up and we’ve been working to make sure it works.”
Residents of the Shearer Hills neighborhood, where the MRC is located, had a different perspective. The city stood up the center in 2022 without much public discussion, and several neighbors took the opportunity Thursday to register their opinions with the council.
Jennifer Neal, president of the Shearer Hills-Ridgeview Neighborhood Association, said even among her “very compassionate neighbors,” many were uneasy about the large number of strangers passing through their neighborhood and felt “blindsided” by the city’s decision to locate it there.
Police Chief William McManus said that despite that unease, crime statistics around the MRC don’t indicate it’s causing any significant public safety threats.
Still, some council members expressed interest in rethinking the location or the setup of the MRC as the city considers what its future migrant aid should look like.
“In our haste, and in the spirit of compassion, I think we dropped the ball on preparing the neighborhood for the facility and continuing to facilitate a safe environment in and around the facility,” said Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2).
“There’s an opportunity to think about a more permanent facility that isn’t behind somebody’s house,” he added. “I think that’s fair and I would ask that we do explore that.”
