Trump Regime Redirects FEMA Funding to ICE

[Content Note: Nativism.]

Malice is the governing principle of the Trump Regime, and here is yet more evidence of that ugly truth: $33.1 million was diverted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from various agencies this year, and nearly $10 million of that was redirected from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), during this year's hurricane season, even as people are still struggling to recover from last year's hurricane season, especially in Puerto Rico, in part because FEMA support has been withdrawn or denied.

John Bowden at MSNBC reports:

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Tuesday night released documents appearing to show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) diverted nearly $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

...Those diverted funds, totaling $33.1 million, "will provide funding in support of higher priority detention and removal requirements than those for which originally appropriated," according to the documents.

Merkley says he believes the transfer from FEMA to ICE was made this summer. He told Maddow that "it means that just as hurricane season is starting...the administration is working hard to find funds for child detention camps."

"So $10 million dollars comes out of FEMA when we're facing hurricane season, knowing what happened last year, and look what's happened since?" Merkley said, referring to a recent hurricane in the Pacific that largely missed Hawaii, and another, Florence, currently threatening North Carolina and the East Coast.

"I find it extraordinary," he added. "It says that money came from response and recovery, right on it."

Again, I want to remind everyone that the Trump Regime's obscene immigration agenda is based on outright lies. There is no urgent crisis threatening the United States because of undocumented immigration — not an employment crisis, not a crime and violence crisis, not a health crisis.

That's important to remember, because not only is this administration diverting response and recovery funding during hurricane season to fund its vile nativism, but it's doing so for literally no other reason but malice.