It Is Time to Stop Allocating FEMA Funding to Illegal Immigrants

Three months ago, the impeached Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas promised reporters that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was “tremendously prepared for hurricane season.” Now, he’s changing his tune. On October 2, he claimed that FEMA does not “have the funds” to make it through hurricane season, which means that people suffering from the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene must fend for themselves, not to mention the destruction Hurricane Milton is now bringing to the people of Florida. In response to this crisis, Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Sunday $157 million in additional aid for displaced people, not in our own country, but in the nation of Lebanon. Meanwhile the people of Lebanon, Tennessee are volunteering and sending aid to their fellow citizens across the state.

FEMA’s incompetent management is an age-old problem. In 1992, when Hurricane Andrew swept through Southern Florida and into the bayous near Lafayette, Louisiana, where I grew up, it left a long trail of death and destruction. My community couldn’t wait for FEMA to get its act together, so, as an 18-year-old Eagle Scout, I helped clear the wreckage. I know many young people across the Southeast are doing the same today.

But what makes this Biden-Harris botched response unique—and particularly outrageous—is that the same administration claiming it doesn’t have enough money to support suffering Americans appropriated $1.6 billion dollars in FEMA funds to assist illegal aliens since October 2021.

The die was cast in the Fiscal Year 2022 appropriations bill, when Congress added $150 million for FEMA to provide “shelter and other services to families and individuals encountered by” DHS.

This error was then compounded in appropriations for FY 2023 and 2024 when Congress ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection to hand over $800 million and $650 million, respectively, to FEMA’s newly branded “Shelter and Services Program.”

Biden and Border Czar Harris didn’t prioritize these funds for Americans suffering from natural disasters. Rather, they distributed them to organizations assisting illegal aliens encountered by DHS, by, for example, purchasing nearly 14,000 hotel rooms for illegal aliens in New York City over the past two years.

Historically, these funds and other public benefits were only available to U.S. citizens or people who had achieved “Qualified Alien Status,” such as lawful permanent residents, refugees, and survivors of trafficking. But under the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies, almost all migrants are now considered “qualified.” And for the few who aren’t, FEMA is shamefully encouraging them to find ways around the law under the guise of a “diverse immigration status.”

Washington regularly treats FEMA funding as a political football to achieve other priorities. In August 2023, for example, Biden and his allies in Congress put forward a supplemental funding bill that made funding FEMA’s depleted Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) contingent on Congress providing billions in new funding for military aid to Ukraine in its battle against Russia. I warned lawmakers at the time that this set a dangerous precedent. Taking care of Americans should always come first and be considered separately from other less-important priorities. But unsurprisingly, Congress folded again.

The decision by lawmakers and bureaucrats to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars on illegal aliens breaking our laws and foreign wars overseas over suffering U.S. citizens is a betrayal of the American people’s trust. It’s also something President Trump routinely rejected while in office even over the objections of those in the Republican party. To set things right, both Secretary Mayorkas and Congress have options. As Andrew Arthur points out at the Center for Immigration Studies, Title V of the 2024 DHS appropriations bill allows Mayorkas to move “up to 5 percent of any appropriation for the current fiscal year”—that means he can take millions from the migrant programs and move it to disaster relief.

And if Congress does reconvene to provide the “comprehensive disaster relief” that President Biden has called for, they should start by taking money directly from these rotten programs that exist only to relocate migrants into the American heartland on the American taxpayers’ dime. Congress has the power to do this, and there is no need to wait. As of Saturday, Hurricane Helene’s death toll reached 227, making it the deadliest hurricane in America since Katrina hit my home state in 2005. At the time, the media and the American people rightly blamed President George W. Bush and his administration for their poor response.

Since Secretary Mayorkas claimed to be almost out of money for Americans after providing only $45 million in relief, it is time for this White House—and all of Washington—to be held accountable as well.

Today, as state and local officials are working with first responders, Eagle Scouts, and good Samaritans to restore power, recover missing people, and rebuild homes, we should remember that America’s greatest asset is the resiliency of its people, and its greatest liability is the treachery of its governing elites.