Title 42, Latino refugees and ICE raids: Covering immigration in San Antonio

In April of 2022, I began reporting on immigration when thousands of migrants arrived in San Antonio. They were scared, they didn't speak English and they were desperate for help to get to their host cities.

Stretched thin, nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping immigrants wanted money to help the next wave of people expected to arrive in San Antonio. The Biden Administration wanted to lift Title 42, a pandemic-era health order that allowed the U.S. to turn away hundreds of thousands of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the spread of COVID, despite legal battles and a lawsuit from 21 Republican states, including Texas.

It was inside the basement of an old cathedral in downtown that I met a young Honduran family setting up for the night on cots.

They told me they were on their way to California by bus in the morning— They just needed somewhere to sleep safely throughout the night. Clueless, their two children under 3 played with toys donated to them by the nonprofit. The family fled from gang violence in Honduras, where bad men destroyed their home before burning it to the ground.

"“Here… I feel that I can sleep peacefully, walk around peacefully, without fear,” the father of two said in Spanish. “This is one [story] of many and worse you’ll hear. Independently, everyone fights a battle.” 

A month later, hundreds of thousands more migrants had arrived in San Antonio, many without clear plans on where to go next or how to get there. The mayor asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help keep the number of migrants transiting through San Antonio at a manageable level and send them to other cities so that resources aren't strained.

But when no help arrived, San Antonio began to use its Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program FEMA funds to run a new migrant resource and operation center in July to contain the number of people who didn't know what to do once they arrived in San Antonio.

Outside the resource center, migrants told me they weren't welcomed by nearby businesses who refused to serve them or let them inside, and by residents who drove by to yell at them and record it. Some elderly residents made accusations and unverified claims about the migrants who stood outside the migrant resource center. Some people in San Antonio were desperate to help and drove by the parking lot with food and clothing, valuable items to people who arrived with almost nothing.

I began to notice details that led me across the street, where I discovered a fence with a hole in it big enough for the average person to walk through that led to an abandoned lot where families with children had been sleeping. The city's 3-day policy pushed people onto the streets. As I interviewed people at the scene, a 3-year-old boy from Venezuela played with a ball near piles of trash at a makeshift outdoor shelter.

A few days later as I spoke with people outside, a source told he helped a woman named "Perla" round up 10 people he met outside the migrant center because she promised to get them jobs and education for their children. The people he lured ended up at Martha's Vineyard as part of a political stunt about sanctuary cities by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

42 Venezuelan migrants and five children flown from San Antonio to Martha's Vineyard gained a path to lawful status and are in the U.S., thanks to a criminal investigation into the people who lured migrants onto planes under false pretenses.

San Antonio began handing off the center to a nonprofit non-governmental organization, Catholic Charities of San Antonio, claiming it was going to exist for longer than it initially planned. The city began to partner with Austin to get migrants to their host cities.

Got some hate mail. In efforts to humanize "migrants," I reported on why Cubans and Venezuelans were arriving to the U.S. in record numbers. I can't forget the tearful reunions I watched between family members who hadn't seen each other in years.

Suddenly, the U.S. with Mexico agreed to turn back Venezuelan migrants who enter the U.S. Any Venezuelan national who wanted to enter the U.S. applied for the humanitarian parole program that proved they had a host within the U.S. to sponsor them. At an event in San Antonio, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the new rule should apply to all immigrants. The Archbishop of San Antonio added to the chorus of criticism of new immigration rules. More experts spoke on immigration panels across the city, one finding common ground on the need for immigration reform.

Meanwhile, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was at risk of being struck down if lawmakers didn't work to save it. I spoke to Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) at a press conference, where he told me his goal in the lame duck session was to urge congress to make DACA permanent.

Right now, dreamers can renew, but first-timers can't apply for it. DACA recipients, who today are teachers, veterans and business owners, continue to be the target of ICE arrests.

Along the thread of my coverage, I investigated the asylum process and sat through hours of immigration court hearings. I looked at the data, which revealed that most people claiming asylum will be deported. While they wait, they're in limbo, trapped in a backlogged system and stuck without jobs or income.

Title 42 ended May 11. Everyone thought there was going to be a huge wave of migrants flooding the city. In August 2023, San Antonio got more federal funds to continue aiding migrants through 2025. In December 2023, San Antonio opened another holding facility at the airport as hundreds of people slept outside an overflowing migrant resource center. They closed in April 2024.

Later, in November, San Antonio and Catholic Charities gave up the information of thousands of migrants it aided to access frozen government funds reimbursing operation expenses at the centers.

ICE raids started in San Antonio in Janurary 2025 after President Donald Trump vowed to deport "millions and millions" of immigrants back to their home countries in his inaugural address last week. I reported the story of a San Antonio man who published a TikTok asking ICE to come to Lorenzo De Zavala Elementary School on the city's West Side, where he worked as a teacher.