OAN Staff James Meyers
4:26 PM – Tuesday, April 1, 2025
A massive migrant shelter in San Diego, California, is closing its doors as the city has seen a significant drop in asylum seekers since President Donald Trump returned back to the White House.
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According to CBS8 News San Diego, the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Mission Valley is reportedly returning back to normal hotel operations — and it will no longer be run as a migrant shelter.
Reports indicated that the migrant shelter was run by Catholic Charities.
The latest migrant shelter closure comes after the Jewish Family Service of San Diego announced in February it was closing its center and laying off 115 employees due to “changes in federal funding and policy.”
“Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) is working to meet the evolving needs of the community in response to recent and anticipated federal policy changes,” the organization previously said. “With a deep commitment to its core value of ‘Welcome the Stranger,’ JFS is focusing its immigration efforts on providing pro bono legal services and community support resources.”
The shelter had operated in San Diego County as a regional migrant shelter for more than six years prior to its closure.
The non-governmental organization (NG) has said it has not received any additional asylum-seeking families or individuals since the CBP One phone app was taken down when Trump became president again.
The application allowed immigrants to be paroled into the U.S. and was created under the first Trump administration to help assist with scheduling cargo inspections.
In 2023, the app was expanded to help allow migrants to make an appointment at a port of entry to be allowed in, initially due to an exception from the Title 42 public health order. Since last May, they have had the opportunity to be paroled into the U.S. as part of the Biden administration’s method of “lawful pathways,” at the time.
Meanwhile, U.S. Border Patrol agents have announced since February that migrant encounters have decreased by a staggering 95%.
According to the Los Angeles Times, arrests have gone from more than 1,200 per day compared to the Biden administration, who’s “peak” last April was 30 to 40 per day.
“To say there has been a dramatic change would be an understatement,” Jeffrey Stalnaker, acting chief patrol agent of the San Diego sector of the border, told the newspaper outlet.
At the end of December, over 936,000 migrants made appointments to be paroled via the app, according to Customs and Border Protection.
“With migrants no longer able to use the CBP One application, the San Diego Rapid Response Network (SDRRN) Migrant Shelter Services, operated by JFS, has not received new asylum-seeking families and individuals released from short-term federal custody into our care. Due to these changes in federal funding and policy, the SDRRN Migrant Shelter Services will be paused until there is better understanding of future community needs,” the statement continued.
In 2024, the SDRRN received $22,077,365 in taxpayer-funded FEMA money, despite claiming they didn’t receive any funds, according to grant records on the FEMA website.
Meanwhile, other cities across the country have closed down their migrant shelters, including the City of Denver that closed four migrant shelters and announced at the time it would “consolidate shelters with the goal of saving the city millions of dollars.”
According to the New York Post, during the last few weeks of the Biden administration, 400-500 new migrants were asking the city for help every week.
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