Last year, in the final months of the Biden administration, the federal government’s internal watchdog agency issued a warning: Thanks to a loophole granted by federal lawmakers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the nation’s immigration enforcement agency, was overspending — at the expense of other federal priorities like disaster relief.
It was a sign of things to come.
As the Trump administration carries out its sweeping immigration crackdown, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is siphoning ever more resources and personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The practice, first implemented in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, further empowered by an Obama-era regulatory carve-out, and cheered on by the organized right, now threatens national preparedness for climate disasters, even as flooding, wildfires, and hurricanes exacerbated by the changing climate threaten millions, from Texas to California.
ICE has been able to acquire these funds thanks to the broad authority that Congress has routinely granted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reshuffle funds, as well as a decade-old loophole that allows DHS to grant ICE additional money for immigration detention with extremely limited oversight.
Meanwhile, FEMA is being gutted. In advance of the twenty-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Friday, August 29, current and former FEMA workers warned in a letter this week that the disaster relief agency’s capacities have been left “significantly limited” as President Donald Trump takes a sledgehammer to the agency, which he has said he wants to completely dismantle. (More than thirty employees who signed the letter were put on leave on Wednesday.)
For years, internal government watchdogs and…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
