A migrant shelter for asylum-seeking families will remain in its new location in a county building in downtown San Diego through the rest of 2019, according to county officials.
County Supervisors Greg Cox and Nathan Fletcher, the two county officials who pushed the county board to help local nonprofits who have been sheltering the newcomers since last fall, toured the facility on Wednesday.
Both supervisors touted the shelter as an example of bipartisan problem-solving.
"We're all coming together to just do the right thing," Fletcher said.
The location is the sixth for the San Diego Rapid Response Network shelter, which began in November 2018 after federal immigration officials stopped helping asylum seekers about to be released from custody connect with their sponsors.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said at the time that it could no longer maintain the program because of the increasing numbers of families arriving along the southwest border to ask the U.S. for protection.
The shelter initially moved through a series of temporary sites before local and state politicians began to take notice.
Cox toured the shelter over the winter holidays and felt called to action, he said.
"It became very obvious that this issue would have a significant impact for the region if it didn't find a solution," Cox said.
He worried, among other issues, that if families released by ICE didn't receive to get to their final destinations, which are often across the U.S., they might end up among the county's homeless population.
The shelter has so far helped more than 11,000 migrants who have been released into the U.S., according to Michael Hopkins of Jewish Family Service, one of the lead organizations with the network.
Having a location guaranteed for the next nine months means that staff don't have to be devoted to constantly looking for a new place to go, Hopkins said.
"It allows us to focus on the quality of the work," Hopkins said.
Before Fletcher took office, he and Cox wrote a letter to the County Board of Supervisors asking for a longer-term location for the shelter. From among several options, the board approved allowing the San Diego Rapid Response Network to use a former courthouse. It is leasing the building to the collective of nonprofits for $1 per year.
The two supervisors are meeting with the San Diego mayor as well as state and federal elected officials to find a permanent solution for when the shelter's time in the county facility runs out.
Gov. Gavin Newsom also added money to the state budget to the local effort to shelter migrant families.
About a month ago, the shelter moved into its new home. Volunteers filled one former courtroom with shelves of donated clothing in meticulously labeled bins.
Another room on the main level of the facility is entirely filled with packages of diapers. The old entryway is used for initial medical screenings, the first step that the shelter's "guests" — as the volunteers and staff prefer to call them — take once they're dropped off by federal immigration officials.
Downstairs, the room that used to house court records has been converted into a dining area, where donated food gets delivered for three meals a day. Rows of green cots fill another large room.
On Wednesday, the shelter was expecting about 300 arrivals over the course of the evening. Many would likely travel the same day if they were headed to family or friends in Los Angeles or other parts of Southern California. Those who pushed the shelter past its sleeping capacity would go to overflow sites.
In the late afternoon, several families sat in a waiting room to be taken to the bus station or airport. One man adjusted the ankle monitor strapped to his leg, a device that all of the adults are released with to help make sure they show up for immigration court hearings.
"Surf's Up" played in Spanish on a television.
In an outside recreation area converted from a parking lot, several of the shelter's guests played soccer with a teen volunteer. The volunteer's father stood nearby, helping a little girl wave a big bubble wand.
At the shelter's guarded entrance, the first group of the 300 had just arrived.
