Some people crossing the border and coming to the Migrant Resource Center in San Antonio are now stranded and adding to the city’s homeless population.
“When you talk to them it’s like ‘yes, we crossed the border and now we have no place to go. I don’t have the specific numbers, but I can tell you, yes there is an increase from previous years,” said Antonio Fernandez, CEO of Catholic Charities.
Catholic Charities is the organization running the migrant resource center. When we interviewed Fernandez, he admitted that at some point, the City of San Antonio is going to have to consider intervening.
“What’s going to happen? Well, really, I don’t know, that’s why I’m looking to save up money for transportation to go to where we want to go,” said one migrant who says he’s from Venezuela.
He is just one of the migrants who are stranded in San Antonio with nowhere to go.
Fernandez said the Migrant Resource Center stopped providing transportation for migrants in January when the federal government stopped allocating money for bus and plane tickets.
“The government now is not giving us, we don’t have that money that we had a year ago to pay for transportation,” said Fernandez.
Aside from not being able to provide resources for migrants to get to their final destination, Catholic Charities also told us they can only house migrants for 45 days at the Migrant Resource Center after those migrants cross the border.
“I can tell you we have seen a huge increase of people in the streets, so we have our mobile units go around like south side, west side, places we usually give out food to the homeless people, we’re having now an increase in people coming to the food pantry and our mobile unit who are from Venezuela,” said Fernandez.
With no place to sleep and no money for a bus or plane ticket, Fernandez said many of these migrants are out on the streets, adding to the homeless population Catholic Charities already serves.
As time continues, Fernandez says at some point, local government needs to consider stepping in, before the problem continues to grow.
“If there’s more and more people staying in San Antonio every day, every week, and there are people who don’t decide to stay here but they don’t have any means then hopefully people are looking at this from the government entities to ensure like’ hey, how do we help them get to their final destination, is there any money for that?” said Fernandez.
The City of San Antonio sent us a statement that reads in part:
“Currently, the City of San Antonio and our partners do not have funds allocated or available to support onward travel for asylum seekers.”
The statement goes on to say:
“The City’s service providers have not indicated a significant number of individuals requesting local services.”
We did reach out to San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, he told us he didn’t have enough information to speak on the matter but promised he would get back to us.
