There could be a brand new alternative for states to use for some Federal Emergency Administration Company funding.
In a current announcement, FEMA mentioned that will probably be distributing $608 million in grant cash. Certain, states can solely use these funds to incarcerate immigrants, which clearly doesn’t assist when pure disasters strike, however nothing is ideal.
States have till August 8 to use for the funding, which is a transparent giveaway to pink states which might be chomping on the bit to lock up immigrants. However the joke may find yourself being on them, as $608 million is a comically small quantity.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ torture chamber within the Everglades value greater than $200 million to construct and is anticipated to value $450 million yearly to function.
President Donald Trump visits Florida’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility.
The just lately handed price range allotted a staggering amount of cash to Trump’s immigration crackdown. Over the following 3 years, $51.6 billion will go towards the development and upkeep of Trump’s border wall and Customs and Border Safety services, and $45 billion for increasing detention capability.
You may need been questioning what prisons for immigrants need to do with catastrophe help and why FEMA cash is being tapped, however that’s simply since you haven’t spent sufficient time within the MAGA fever swamps. In 2024, Congress allotted $650 million to the Division of Homeland Safety for its Shelter and Companies Program.
That cash is meant to assist states, municipalities, and nonprofits present meals, shelter, medical care, clothes, and outreach providers to noncitizen immigrants after they’re launched from DHS custody. This helps alleviate crowding in CBP services whereas additionally housing immigrants. No cash goes on to immigrants, and entities can solely be reimbursed for immigrants who’re launched by DHS, not all undocumented immigrants. The funding stream can be fully separate from FEMA’s catastrophe help funding.
However MAGA invented a world the place President Joe Biden used this cash to place up Tren de Aragua gang members in New York’s swankiest lodges. So after all, as a result of the Trump administration is stuffed with the dumbest, most vicious individuals possible, that cash needs to be taken away.
Now, FEMA funding will likely be used for the “detention support program.” In every other administration, this could be an impermissible warping of congressional intent and a wild overreach by the chief department, however not today.
An individual is seen reacting to the devastation of flooding in Texas on July 6.
In the meantime, the catastrophe help funding usually related to FEMA is now being supplied based mostly on sheer whimsy and partisanship. So Maryland doesn’t get cash for floods, however Texas does. North Carolina, California, and Washington can take a hike. Since nobody is stopping the Trump administration from utilizing taxpayer cash as a deal with or a cudgel based mostly purely on Trump’s emotions, that is going to proceed.
However chopping FEMA to the bone hurts its total capability and infrastructure, so it doesn’t even work effectively as a deal with for pink states. This week’s departure of Ken Pagurek, FEMA’s City Search and Rescue chief, lays this naked. Pagurek resigned within the wake of the Texas floods and within the face of the Trump administration’s cuts to company funding and personnel.
Even in a most-favored state like Texas, the administration’s response was abysmal. Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem sat on approving City Search and Rescue groups for 72 hours and laid off a whole lot of name middle contract workers who fielded catastrophe help calls.
If Trump doesn’t handle to completely shut FEMA, which is one in all his targets, there will likely be much more of this. Catastrophe help isn’t the type of factor the place you possibly can simply hold a couple of skeleton crew members round to spin issues up when catastrophe strikes. You want infrastructure and personnel—two issues the Trump administration doesn’t care about.
However, hey, a minimum of pink states can crawl over one another for a pittance of grant cash to partially construct immigrant prisons.
