Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season, and Republicans both in Congress and out are not taking it well.
Seething lawmakers and right-wing commentators latched onto the Department of Homeland Security’s decision last year to award $640 million in FEMA-administered funds to assist state and local governments in dealing with a recent influx of migrants and asylum seekers, blaming the allocation for the shortfall.
“Kamala spent all of her FEMA money—billions of dollars—on housing for illegal migrants,” former President Donald Trump told a rally crowd in Saginaw, Michigan.
“They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to their illegal immigrants who they want to have vote for them,” he added. (Undocumented immigrants cannot vote in U.S. elections, and attempts by them to do so are incredibly rare.)
“Mayorkas and FEMA—immediately stop spending money on illegal immigration resettlement and redirect those funds to areas hit by the hurricane,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted. “Put Americans first.”
Former President Donald Trump is briefed by local officials about the damage from Hurricane Helene in Valdosta, Georgia.
Doug Mills/The New York Times via Getty Images
“I HAVE PEOPLE THAT HAVE DIED MY COUNTY AND FEMA GAVE FUNDING TO ILLEGALS,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna fumed on X.
The $640 million earmarked for migrant humanitarian services during the 2024 fiscal year was approved by Congress for FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, a wholly separate and unrelated initiative to the agency’s Disaster Relief Program.
“The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams,” a Homeland Security spokesperson told Newsweek, calling the Republican claims “completely false.”
The funds allocated to handle asylum seekers also constitutes approximately 2 percent of FEMA’s annual budget, which is typically measured in the billions. Its 2023 total gross budget authority was just under $30 billion. For this financial year, which began Oct. 1, the agency requested $33.1 billion, according to Newsweek.
What’s more, it has been Republicans who have repeatedly voted in Congress to cut FEMA funding—and the Republican-led House currently controls FEMA’s spending and budget. Just last week, the Hill’s “most conservative fiscal hawks” forced congressional leaders to strip a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open of almost all supplemental funding, including disaster funds for FEMA, according to Politico’s E&E News.
One of those hawks was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who voted against the resolution just days before Hurricane Helene made landfall in his state on Thursday night. The storm has since wreaked havoc across the Southeast and claimed more than 160 lives, with the death toll expected to rise.
“I would have thought that if you were going to do something, disaster funding would’ve been one of the starting points,” Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV), chair of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, told the outlet, saying he’d been caught unawares by the modification. “I have no idea how they got to that.”
The continuing resolution did contain an additional $20 billion earmarked for the agency, and the bill allows FEMA to draw on the funds more quickly as needed, according to the Associated Press. But Mayorkas said that while the agency had enough to meet its immediate needs, its ability to fund itself in the future is in doubt.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” he said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
Hurricane season runs until the end of November. Disaster recovery from Helene alone could cost the government up to $34 billion, according to early estimates by experts.
