SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Migrant Resource Center can house around 707 people. So when they have around 1,000 people needing help at the end of the day, that's a problem.
Catholic Charities CEO Antonio Fernandez said he was up until 4 a.m. in the morning on Thursday, trying to get everyone taken care of.
"It's four o'clock in the morning and the first thing I hear from one man is, 'can I have a piece of bread?'" Fernandez said. "We shouldn't have people who have nothing to eat for 24 hours."
Fernandez said the resource center has been serving around 1,000 people that last few nights and they have needed to double shifts and get more case management services, and security, to handle the increase in migrants.
"We used to have 500 to 600 people. Now we have 900 people, 1,000 people. We don't have enough tools to help everybody," Fernandez said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows Texas saw an average of 2,355 migrants crossing into Texas every day in October. The numbers for November aren't available yet, but the numbers are now so high the federal government closed an international bridge in Eagle Pass this week, to attempt to better control the incoming migrants.
Fernandez said Catholic Charities is keeping the Migrant Resource Center open 24/7 to offer food, water and blankets right now. Unfortunately, he also said federal funding for the center is set to decrease at the start of 2024 and they won't have money to help migrants with bus or plane tickets at that time. He said many people will no longer have a way out of San Antonio unless more funding is provided.
"We expect a significant amount of people coming to San Antonio will stay in San Antonio longer," Fernandez said. "I think we have a severe problem coming to us January 1, unless things change on the federal level."
Fernandez said he is in talks with the City of San Antonio, FEMA, and members of congress about the funding issue.
U.S. Congressman Tony Gonzales, who represents the state's 23rd Congressional District, told KENS 5 the migrant situation has only gotten worse since September.
"You are seeing every single month become a new record and I expect November to be no different. It's groundhog day along the border," Gonzales said. "You are seeing thousands of people in these trains (of people) overwhelming border patrol."
Gonzales said only way to deter migration at this point it to significantly increase deportation flights to return migrants to their home countries and to have the state department work harder to facilitate those flights.
"Until we start deporting people that do not qualify for asylum via these repatriation flights, there is no amount of border agents you can deploy in order to get this under control," Gonzales said. "The state department needs to get off its butt and work with these foreign countries to take people back, and DHS needs to follow suit and execute."
Gonzales also said he met with a Mexican ambassador to the U.S. Tuesday night. He said, based on that conversation, if the Biden administration starts more stringent enforcement of border laws, then Mexico should follow suit.