The Biden-Harris administration took more than a billion tax dollars that had been allocated to the agency responsible for American disaster relief and used it to offer services for illegal immigrants.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allocated nearly $364 million in the fiscal year 2023 and $650 million for the 2024 fiscal year to the “Shelter and Services Program” “to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” according to the government’s website.
The program is run in cooperation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “to support CBP in the safe, orderly and humane release of noncitizen migrants from short-term holding facilities,” FEMA’s website reads.
An anonymous X account highlighted the program after MSNBC pundit Michael Steele sought to portray former President Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief who denied Americans full relief from catastrophic weather events.
“In case folks forgot what Trump did to FEMA’s relief fund,” Steele wrote to frame a post about the former president pulling $271 million from DHS to detain migrants. The NBC article featured in Steele’s post said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pulled $155 million directly from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, just a fraction of the resources used by the Biden-Harris administration to care for illegal border crossers.
FEMA’s top priorities under the incumbent administration, meanwhile, do not include disaster relief among the top two goals of the emergency services agency. According to FEMA’s own website, the stated goals include, first, instilling “equity as a foundation of emergency management,” and second, “lead[ing] whole of community in climate resilience.” The goal to “promote and sustain a ready FEMA and prepared nation” ranks third.
Now, residents across the southeastern United States are suffering from the administration’s misplaced priorities, which place “equity” and “climate resilience” ahead of emergency preparedness. While FEMA routinely prepares for colossal rescue operations with resources lined up in the days ahead of major storms, such pre-staged support was clearly not available to residents in the Appalachian towns that were washed away by overwhelming rains from Hurricane Helene. Hundreds remain missing as the storm becomes the Biden administration’s “Katrina moment.”
“Democrats sailed to a massive victory in the 2006 midterms, campaigning on Bush’s allegedly flat-footed Katrina response and the unpopular war in Iraq, rendering the president impotent for his last two years in office,” wrote Federalist Senior Editor John Davidson. Now Vice President Kamala Harris is running for the Oval Office while coordinating a “staged photo pretending to work on the disaster response (earbuds not even plugged into the phone, taking notes on a blank piece of paper), together with the absence of FEMA or any other federal assistance to storm-ravaged areas of western North Carolina and Georgia.”
Article originally appeared in The Federalist, October 1, 2024