Mayor Ron Nirenberg is traveling to Brownsville on Thursday to meet with President Joe Biden about migrants arriving across the southern border.
Nirenberg has championed what he calls a “compassionate” approach to handing asylum-seeking migrants who reach San Antonio, while also pleading with federal leaders for more resources to help the city send those allowed into the U.S. on to final destinations in other cities.
In recent months the city’s Migrant Resource Center on San Pedro Avenue has been so overwhelmed, it’s started sheltering migrants with scheduled flights at a second facility near the San Antonio airport.
With dwindling federal funds available to assist migrants, Catholic Charities, which oversees the city’s migrant aid, has begun leaning on organizations that assist homeless locals, like Haven for Hope.
In a Tuesday memo to City Council members, Nirenberg said he has asked the city manager to reschedule Thursday’s council meeting so he can join Biden in Brownsville.
While officials in other major cities have criticized the White House over the strain migrants — including those transported to those cities by bus by Gov. Greg Abbot’s administration — put on their city services, San Antonio has sought to be a partner to the Biden administration.
San Antonio has assisted nearly 600,000 migrants since the city’s opened its Migrant Resource Center in 2021, Nirenberg wrote.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas toured the center in August 2022 and called it a model for other cities.
The city’s work has been funded primarily through federal reimbursements, however, which have become increasingly uncertain amid threats of a partial government shutdown as soon as next week.
“Safety is our number one priority as we work to humanely assist asylum seekers as they travel to their host family’s destination within the United States,” Nirenberg wrote in the memo.
Biden’s visit to the border comes five days before primary elections in 15 states, including Texas, where border security is a top issue among Republicans.
Former President Donald Trump also is scheduled to visit the southern border Thursday, roughly 300 miles away in Eagle Pass.
