Feds have a duty to fund migrant center
Immigration is a federal responsibility. But our immigration system often imposes burdens on local communities. That’s been particularly true over the past three years, as the number of asylum-seekers arriving at the U.s.-mexico border has spiked.
As the closest major metropolitan area to the South Texas border, San Antonio has been a funnel for migrants released in border cities. Since January 2021, more than 600,000 migrants have made temporary stops in San Antonio on the way to their final destinations.
It’s to this community’s great credit that the city and area nonprofits have met this challenge. Now it’s time for the federal government to step up.
In July 2022, the city created the Migrant Resource Center to provide asylum-seekers with a facility for their temporary stays, and to streamline and organize the flow of shelter, food, transportation and other essential services.
Eventually, Catholic Charities took over the center’s daily operation, and the San Antonio Food Bank has provided food for migrants staying there.
Up to this point, the federal government has covered the costs for those services. Since 2021, it has provided more than $121 million to the San Antonio community for migrant services, with $35.6 million going to the city and the rest going to Catholic Charities, the food bank and other nonprofits.
That source of funding is in jeopardy.
At current spending rates, the city will run out of funding for the Migrant Resource Center by September, while the food bank will exhaust its resources by August and Catholic Charities by December.
San Antonio did not ask to be put in this position, and the city wasn’t presented with a host of options. San Antonio has no control over federal border policy, and it can’t prevent asylum-seekers from passing through the city after they’ve been processed and released at the border.
Even without the Migrant Resource Center, a high number of migrants would still pass through our community. But we’d have a much more difficult time providing them with the shelter and services they need.
The federal government has a responsibility to allocate more funds to keep the shelter running.
Last December, Mayor Ron Nirenberg sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and San Antonio’s congressional delegation requesting additional funding. The city is waiting for a response.
Funding for the Migrant Resource Center is being held hostage by a historically dysfunctional Congress, one that failed to pass a bipartisan border security agreement that would have allocated $1.4 billion to cities and states to cover the costs of migrant services.
“In lieu of those (federal) resources, what is the alternative?” Nirenberg asked his colleagues during a March 7 city staff briefing to City Council on the Migrant Resource Center. “We know what it’s like if we just let it continue, and we have no answer to it, we have no operational control over the impacts, which is what the MRC was intended to do.”
Closing the center isn’t an option. If additional federal money fails to come in, the city has two possible recourses: Cut back on migrant services to stretch the existing federal dollars for a few months, or dip into city funds.
Spending city funds on the Migrant Resource Center would not only be controversial, it would be an unfair and unsustainable burden for San Antonio to bear. This city shouldn’t be penalized for doing the right thing.
When it comes to the cost of migrant services, the federal government needs to meet its responsibilities.
Coffers will soon be empty; it’s time for U.S. government to step up