Did Trump Take Money Out Of Fema
Trump administration to divert FEMA funds for migrant detention and border enforcement
Washington — The Trump administration is planning to use $271 meg allocated for disaster aid efforts and other initiatives to aggrandize space in migrant detention centers and bolster a programme that requires tens of thousands of aviary-seekers to await in Mexico while their cases are processed in the U.S.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified Congress in late July that it intended to reprogram funds from several agencies — including the Federal Emergency Management Bureau (FEMA), the Transportation Security Assistants (TSA) and U.South. Coast Guard — to detention centers managed past Clearing and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It likewise said it was funding the construction of temporary facilities for the authorities to hold court hearings for its controversial "Remain in Mexico" program.
The notification to Congress was get-go revealed in a letter from Democratic Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the Firm Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, to Interim DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan. The California Democrat expressed her disagreement with his agency'due south plans.
DHS notification to Congress, obtained past CBS News
"It is of keen concern that during the class of this administration, at that place has been a growing disconnect between the will of Congress, as represented by Water ice funding levels in enacted appropriations bills signed by the President, and the Department, immigration enforcement operations, which frequently lack justification," Roybal-Allard wrote in her letter, dated August 23.
Roybal-Allard said the proposed activity by the sprawling department — which oversees two immigration-related agencies but also has important national security and disaster response responsibilities — would allow Water ice to detain more people and carry out more removal operations. Over the by years, Congress has express the number of detention beds through funding bills. Roybal-Allard accused DHS of attempting to circumvent those limits through its new programme to transfer funds.
DHS notified the committee that $116 1000000 funds from different branches would go to finance the buy of new beds for Ice, likewise as operational needs. Co-ordinate to its notification to Congress, obtained by CBS News, DHS plans to gather this amount past taking funding from Customs and Edge Protection's (CBP) operations upkeep, infrastructure projects and research for the Coast Guard, training and supplies for TSA employees, including Air Marshals, a cybersecurity initiative, an endeavour to counter weapons of mass destruction and other areas.
The bureau also said it would divert $155 million from FEMA'southward Disaster Relief Fund and then the government can establish facilities forth the border for asylum seekers placed in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program and returned to Mexico.
Nether the "Remain in Mexico" policy, migrants are only temporarily allowed back into the U.S. for the hearing. So far, the U.S. has placed more than 37,000 people in this program, CBP confirmed to CBS News on Tuesday. Migrants returned to Mexico in California and in the El Paso sector are scheduled for court hearings in San Diego and El Paso, respectively. But there are no immigration courts close to the Texas border cities of Brownsville and Laredo, the other locations where MPP has been implemented.
Because of this, the administration is looking to build "soft-sided facilities" in these parts of Texas. But Roybal-Allard noted that the state's immigration courts are overseen past the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a co-operative of the Justice Department, which she said is funded through separate congressional appropriations. She said using coin to support those courts would seemingly violate federal police force that "prohibits the obligation of funds from one appropriation account for a purpose if Congress has appropriated funds for that purpose through another account."
In a argument to CBS News, FEMA said the transfer of funds to "support the border emergency" will leave the agency with $447 million in funding for future disaster relief efforts. "This amount will be sufficient to support operational needs and will not impact ongoing long-term recovery efforts beyond the country," the agency added.
FEMA said the electric current pool of funding for ongoing recovery efforts, including those for natural disasters in 2017, volition not be affected by the transfer. In its notification to Congress, DHS said the disaster relief funds left intact at FEMA will be sufficient to sustain operations "absent significant new catastrophic events."
But Democrats expressed business organization virtually the transfer of FEMA funds during hurricane flavor and as Puerto Rico braces for Tropical Storm Dorian. Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said DHS was "flouting the constabulary" with its plan.
"This is reckless and the Administration is playing with burn down — all in the name of locking upward families and children and playing to the President'south base leading up to an election year. Taking money away from TSA and from FEMA in the middle of hurricane season could have deadly consequences," Thompson wrote in a statement.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York echoed Thompson's sentiments.
"The Trump assistants'southward plan to divert money abroad from FEMA at the start of hurricane season to continue its efforts to separate and jail migrant families is backwards and savage," Schumer wrote in a argument. "Taking these critical funds from disaster preparedness and recovery efforts threatens lives and weakens the government'southward ability to help Americans in the wake of natural disasters."
Earlier this year, the White Business firm considered a proposal that would divert billions of dollars in disaster aid funds for Puerto Rico and several states affected by natural disasters to fund the construction of President Trump's long promised wall along the U.South.-Mexico border.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fema-funds-to-ice-trump-administration-disaster-aid-money-to-migrant-detention-centers-dorian-approaches-puerto-rico/
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