Mayor of California border town says soon thousands of migrants will flood the streets and 'destroy businesses' as overwhelmed shelters buckle under crisis

A California mayor fears migrants will end up flooding the streets of his town due to a nearby migrant center went bust after just five months. 

Non-profit SBCS, closed their doors on Thursday after squandering $6 million in taxpayers money in just a few months.

The migrant center, formerly known as South Bay Community Services, said the  number of people needing help in that time 'increased significantly'.

The center, located in Chula Vista, had been taking in those crossing over the San Diego border, which in the last five months has totaled over 100,000. 

The mayor of nearby El Cajon, Bill Wells has now told Fox News that he fears the closure will create a 'serious problem' for his community.  

The center, located in Chula Vista, had been taking in those crossing over the San Diego border, which in the last five months has totaled over 100,000

Migrants board a U.S. Border Patrol patrol vehicle on February 13, 2024 in San Diego, California

The Republican is worried that following the closure of the non-profit , migrants will congregate in his city. Pictures of migrants being taken to El Cajon are seen here

Migrants are seen in this picture after being bussed to El Cajon, the town which Mayor Wells governs over

He told the outlet: 'Over the past few months we've seen 100,000 migrants come across the San Diego border.

'A lot of those have been absorbed by this county shelter that used taxpayer money. 

'They asked for $3 million and they spent over $6 million and now they say they're out of money. So we're going to see migrants congregating in our streets.

'At the same time this is happening, border patrol tells us we are going to go from 300 drop offs a day, to a 1000 drop offs a day. 

'I think it's going to become a pretty serious problem pretty quickly. They spend up to $8,000 per person per month to put someone up in a hotel.

'It ruins the neighborhoods, it destroys the hotels, it destroys our security infrastructure and it is really bad for everybody.'

In announcing the closure of the center, CEO Kathie Lembo said: 'As the number of migrants arriving at the center has increased significantly over the last few weeks, our finite resources have been stretched to the limit, leading to the closure of the center on February 22.

'When we accepted the challenge of this work in October of last year, we knew two things: that it spoke to the heart of our mission, and that it was for a limited time.'

Speaking on the $6 million that the center burned through, Lembo added: 'With the receipt of that money there was expectations that it would be used until the end of March, so ending a month early does raise concerns and questions for me.'

Staff members of a charity organization provide migrants with food on February 13, 2024 in San Diego, California

A border patrol agent patrols along a construction site for the secondary border fence which follows the length of the primary border fence that separates the United States and Mexico in the San Diego Sector on August 22, 2019

A Border Patrol agent asks asylum-seeking migrants to line up in a makeshift, mountainous campsite after the group crossed the border with Mexico, Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, near Jacumba Hot Springs

Border Patrol agents have had 18,700 encounters with Mexican nationals at the San Diego so far since the start of the fiscal year last October

Asylum seekers wait in line to be processed by the Border Patrol at a makeshift camp near the US-Mexico border east of Jacumba, San Diego County, California, January 2, 2024

It emerged earlier this week that that border at San Diego is seeing a big jump in the number of Chinese migrants being detained. 

US Customs and Border Protection has recorded 21,000 encounters with Chinese nationals in the San Diego Sector since the fiscal year began in October, according to CBP data obtained by Fox News that is not yet public.

That's more than the 18,700 encounters with Mexican nationals during the same period, and second only to the 28,000 Columbians CBP reported encountering in the sector.

In fiscal 2023, CBP reported 24,048 Chinese citizens were apprehended by Border Patrol at the southern border — up more than 10 times from the 1,970 arrests recorded during the 2022 fiscal year, and just 323 the year before.

Speaking on the number of Chinese migrants at the border, Wells added: 'I went down to the border recently and came across an encampment of people and everyone of them was a Chinese migrant, that is a real serious concern. 

'It makes me nervous to see enemies of our nation congregating right in our city, we have no idea how many are in El Cajon.'

A US Border Patrol chief warned that his agents are being overwhelmed by the flood of Chinese migrants crossing the border and warned they could be Communist spies.

A migrant from China holds up his passport and paperwork as he is photographed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in an open-air holding area as they prepare to board a bus to a processing facility near to the small, desert San Diego County border community of Jacumba Hot Springs in December 2023

A group of people, including many from China, walk along the wall after crossing the border with Mexico to seek asylum on October 24 near Jacumba, California

Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good, of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, said last year that his agents were 'trying their best to figure out why [individuals from other continents are] coming' but that 'information can be hidden' and 'their agendas, their ideologies, the reason for them coming could be missed'.

New figures emerged this week showing that seven million migrants had managed to make their way across the southern border under President Biden. 

Statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that this fiscal year alone, there has already been a reported 961,537 border encounters.

The year, which runs from October to September, is already on current pace to break last year's record of 2,475,669.

Since Biden took office, the total number of southwest land border encounters hit a staggering 7,298,486.

The total does not include an estimated 1.8 million known 'gotaways' who managed to evade law enforcement.

That amount is larger than the individual populations of 36 states, including Alabama, Colorado, Maryland, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.