Trump Weakened Disaster Response By Reassigning FEMA Staff to Immigration Enforcement

Washington, DC – A new report from House Democrats shows that Trump hurt disaster response when his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reassigned FEMA staff to work on immigration enforcement. Last year, Trump’s DHS directed over $600 million from FEMA to build migrant detention centers and forcibly reassigned dozens of key FEMA staff to work for ICE on deportation infrastructure. FEMA was already severely understaffed, because of Trump’s massive cuts. This report found that the administration’s push for FEMA to work on Trump’s immigration agenda was “distracting the agency from its statutorily required responsibilities, jeopardizing its workforce levels and expertise, and reducing its ability to respond to disasters and aid survivors.”

Climate Power Senior Advisor Mia Logan issued the following statement: “This report is confirmation that Trump and DHS have abused their power and abandoned their responsibility to keep people safe. By funneling resources into his dangerous and unlawful immigration enforcement agenda, Trump empowered ICE to terrorize communities and put our disaster response infrastructure at risk. At every turn, Trump has undermined and jeopardized our ability to respond to disasters—leaving families on their own with no support when extreme weather hits. We need elected officials to fund the agencies that help families when disaster strikes, not the agencies that tear families apart.” 

REMINDER: Trump has consistently prioritized unlawful immigration enforcement over disaster recovery:

• Under Trump’s previous DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s leadership, DHS diverted funding and staff to ICE, gutted FEMA, weakened our disaster response, and made our communities less safe.
• Earlier this year, Trump and congressional Republicans kept DHS shut down for 76 days, the longest funding lapse in history, and held FEMA funding hostage to avoid any accountability for ICE terrorizing communities.
• Trump has a record of politicizing disaster relief by repeatedly delaying and denying aid requests from Democratic-led states.