The San Antonio City Council held a tense round of discussions on Thursday over the future funding of the Migrant Resource Center (MRC) as federal dollars distributed to the city and the nonprofit running the MRC are expected to run out before the end of the year.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has spent more than $120 million on San Antonio migrant support services since 2021, a period when more than 600,000 asylum-seekers have traveled through San Antonio. Much of those funds have been allocated to the operations of the MRC.
Of the $14.9 million most recently allocated to the city, Deputy City Manager Lori Houston said $10.5 million remained. She said the city spends roughly $1.3 million each month, and that they expect to run out of that money by September. She added that the San Antonio Food Bank will run out of funding to support the MRC by August, and Catholic Charities will run out of funds to operate the MRC by December.
The city has spent $25.1 million on the MRC since its establishment, $20.7 million which has already been reimbursed, and the rest of which the city expects to be reimbursed by FEMA.
The MRC serves migrants legally traveling through the U.S. who often move through San Antonio for its role as a major transportation hub to the rest of the country. Its services include food, clothing, case management, and navigation support. The MRC has served more than 280,000 migrants since it was established.
Assistant City Manager Lori Houston proposed several contingency plans to address the upcoming MRC funding shortfall: reducing MRC and Airport Transfer Center (ATC) operations cost, canceling and reallocating federal COVID-19 funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, funding from the FEMA Reserve, and, lastly, pulling from the city’s general fund.
Every option other than reducing MRC and ATC operations costs would require council approval.
The ATC provides migrants a waiting area for asylum-seekers flying through the San Antonio International Airport and has been operating since May 2023. Houston said its existence improved the experience both for migrants waiting for their flights and everyone else who uses the airport.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg sent a formal request to the Department of Homeland Security and the San Antonio congressional delegation for an additional $57.5 million, which would continue services through the end of December. Houston said the city has yet to receive a response.
They also requested changes to federal grant rules to make it easier for Catholic Charities to purchase travel tickets and rent hotels for migrants with special needs or who need temporary medical care, and to allow the city to continue to transport migrants to the airport and local bus stations at less than 75% capacity of vehicles.
All council members shared the idea that the MRC and migrant support services are the federal government’s responsibility, but it came down on what to do differently if the federal government doesn’t step in.
District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte said the city shouldn’t spend a single dollar on migrant services when federal funds run out. “And if that means closing the Migrant Resource Center, that’s just what we’re going to have to do,” Whyte said.
Several other council members voiced their own concerns about taking on the responsibility of funding the MRC, but no one else supported Whyte’s position of letting the MRC shut down.
District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda said shutting it down would cause even more problems. “I don’t think that we should do away with [the MRC], I think it would be worse,” she said.
District 3 Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran also said the funds should come from the federal government, but that shutting down the MRC was “an awful idea.”
Houston said the MRC served to streamline a process that existed before the MRC was established and which was extremely inefficient.
District 9 Councilman John Courage was the first council member to openly suggest that the city should fund the MRC with its own general fund dollars if it becomes necessary.
“You know, the MRC is actually saving the city probably millions of taxpayer dollars because we put it up and we’ve been working to make sure it works,” Courage said. “But if the federal money dries up, it’s up to us to deal with it, and that very well may mean taxpayer dollars, because even if we can’t run the MRC anymore, you’re still gonna have maybe 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 people coming through our city, and without us to help guide them through, they’ll be wandering all over the place and it’ll cost us a heck of a lot more money than what we may have to invest to keep it going for up to a million dollars a month.”
Courage was joined only by District 2 Councilman McKee-Rodriguez and District 5 Councilman Teri Castillo in explicitly saying that general fund dollars should be used to support the MRC if necessary.
“If we fail to invest in the Migrant Resource Center, whether it be [with] general funds or FEMA funds or whatever the case may be, we’ll see additional costs in needing to connect folks to additional services that can now be found at the Migrant Resource Center,” Castillo said. “So ultimately, I do believe we need to have a Plan B, which can be general funds or FEMA dollars.”
Several council members suggested passing a resolution calling on the federal government to pass comprehensive immigration legislation and provide the funding necessary to continue running the MRC.
District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur was one of those council members, and though she gave a strong defense for the continued operations of the MRC, she wouldn’t directly answer whether she would support the city using general funds to do so.
“I need to see our options and see where it’s going to come from to make sure that we can do everything possible to keep the MRC going, and that is where we stand,” she said.
City Manager Erik Walsh said that even if the city could use local dollars for its current FEMA-backed contributions to the MRC, it would be “potentially insurmountable” for the city to give the amount of money to Catholic Charities that the nonprofit now gets from FEMA. Catholic Charities, through FEMA, spends tens of millions of dollars more than the city does in the operation of the MRC.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus also gave a presentation about crime in the area surrounding the MRC. He said there have only been six arrests at the MRC, half of which were of San Antonio residents who were arrested for public intoxication, trespass, and narcotics, and that crime trends around the MRC are in line with crime trends in the rest of the city.
The MRC has struggled at times to support all the migrants coming through its doors, even with federal funding. TPR reported in December that the MRC was over capacity, forcing dozens of migrants to sleep out in the cold.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court put on hold a federal appeals court decision that would have allowed Texas’ controversial immigration-enforcement law, Senate Bill 4, to take effect. The future of this law could also complicate the city's situation.
Gabriella Alcorta-Solorio and Joey Palacios contributed to this report.
