As a major hurricane heads toward the Carolinas, Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley berated the Trump administration for diverting nearly $10 million from emergency funding to immigration enforcement.
“As #HurricaneFlorence bears down, I discovered today that the Trump Administration is taking money away from @FEMA so that they can pay to put more asylum seekers in detention centers. This is a scandal,” Merkley of Oregon tweeted on Sept. 11. (FEMA is an acronym for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.)
Merkley appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Sept. 11 and said he obtained documents about the transfer due to his work in “trying to stop the child separations.”
Merkley has been a vocal opponent of the government’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy that led to the separation of more than 2,000 children from their parents as they entered the United States illegally or at ports of entries. Many of them came seeking asylum. Parents separated from their children were sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, and their children were sent to the care of another federal agency.
“Just as hurricane season is starting, it generally starts June 1st, the administration is working hard to find funds for additional detention camps. … In fact, $10 million comes out of FEMA,” Merkley told Maddow.
Is Merkley right that the Trump administration transferred $10 million from FEMA to ICE? The transfer did happen. But the administration contends that appropriations limitations prevented the money from being used for hurricane response. One budget watchdog described the administration’s argument as “disingenuous at best.”
