CARLSBAD — Members of the San Diego Minutemen attended the March 4 City Council meeting and warned the city of “harboring illegal immigrants.”

Members of the group that opposes illegal immigration brought their comments to the council following its February approval of funding for a farm worker shelter.

Mayor Bud Lewis responded that city has been told that the proposed shelter would only house farm workers who are in the country legally and that the nonprofit organization that would run the shelter would do a thorough check of residency paperwork.

The council voted to give Catholic Charities $108,500 for the two-story shelter. Full funding of the project is $2 million, however, the city only approved the initial money needed to study the project.

The 72-bed shelter would be located at La Posada de Guadalupe, a current homeless shelter in Carlsbad run by Catholic Charities that is located off Orion Way, near the corner of El Camino Real and Palomar Airport Road.

During the March 4 meeting, a spokesperson for the shelter said the only time illegal immigrants are allowed on the property is when the shelter opens during cold weather for humanitarian reasons.

A handful of concerned residents told council they should not use taxpayers’ money to support the project.

Vista resident Jeff Schwilk, a member of the San Diego Minutemen, said the migrant situation has been a problem in the county for a long time.

“The growers and farmers need to follow the law in hiring,” Schwilk said, adding that they should be the ones required to provide housing for the workers, not the city.

However, Lewis said no taxpayer money is being used.

He said the money allocated to the shelter was from a fund set aside by developers as mitigation for the destruction of farmland habitat used in new developments.

Last month, City Council reviewed recommendations from the Agricultural Conversion Mitigation Fee Ad Hoc Citizens Advisory Committee, the group formed to make recommendations as to how the money should be spent.

The committee recommended that the city approve funding of lagoon projects, as well as the homeless shelter.

Scott Donnell, senior planner for the city of Carlsbad, told the council that $3 million is now available in the fund. Donnell said that if all the recommended projects are funded, only $530,000 or so would be left, but that a number of projects planned for farmland will replenishment the fund.