SAN ANTONIO – A surge of migrants through San Antonio has community leaders working together to help the growing number of families in the city.

  • 200 to 300 migrants passing through San Antonio daily
  • Church gives bedd to 20 people each night
  • Volunteers working to keep migrants off streets

One of those support systems is a resource center the city created in a vacant store front where they can stay before catching a bus out of town.

"The pouring out of love, support and compassion from the entire community including the city of San Antonio employee family has been incredible," said Interim Assistant City Manager, Colleen Bridgers.

The city of San Antonio opened a resource center a couple weeks ago to help with migrant families being legally processed and released by border patrol.

"I'm happy to open up our space and do anything that we can to make their journey a little bit easier," said Erika Stiner of Travis Park Church.

However, when the center closes at 10 p.m. each night the Travis Park Church steps in.

Stiner works at the church and knows family travel can be hard enough without being turned into a political talking point.

"As a mom, I think about just traveling under normal circumstances with my family and how stressful that is," said Stiner.

Every afternoon, Travis Park Church officials get with the city to come up with a plan for the evening giving beds to about 20 people out of the now 200 to 300 passing through each day. 

"Because we're seeing such a surge in the number of travelers passing through San Antonio there aren't enough buses going to all of the different places there they need to go every day so some of them do have to spend the night here in San Antonio," said Bridgers.

Volunteers and city employees staff the new center. Their main goal is to keep these migrants from ending up on the streets.

"We just are trying to love our neighbors and we don't get to choose who our neighbors are. We're blessed to have the bus station right here and if these people are coming through and able to hopefully feel a little bit of love on their journey," said Stiner.

With the support from this brief stop the migrants are all set to start the next leg of their journey.