Homeland Security Shifted $ 10 Million From FEMA For Immigrant Crackdown, Senator Says

The Trump administration transferred nearly $ 10 million to the Federal Emergency Management Agency earlier this year to fund immigrant detention and deportation efforts, according to a document released Tuesday by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore).

The lawmaker first shared the documents with MSNBC Rachel Maddow, saying that the Department of Homeland Security asked the money "just as hurricane season [was] Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the midst of its new "zero tolerance" immigration policy. The controversial crackdown resulted in the death of parents from their parents.

"This is a scandal. At the beginning of the hurricane season, American citizens in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are still suffering from FEMA, "Merkley said in a statement to HuffPost. "And for what? To implement their profoundly misguided zero tolerance policy. It was not enough to take the child out of the arms of their parents – the administration

The document's release comes just days before Hurricane Florence, a powerful Category 4 storm, is expected to make landfall in the Carolinas. Millions of people are currently evacuating or hunkering down.

"$ 10 million comes out of FEMA when we're facing a hurricane season knowing what happened last year," Merkley told Maddow on Tuesday. "And look what we've had since, a hurricane just barely miss Hawaii. … Now we have this hurricane, Florence, bearing down on the Carolinas. "

DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton late Tuesday called the senator's appearance a "sorry for a push to a false agenda," saying the administration was instead "focused on assisting millions on the East Coast facing a catastrophic disaster."

"The money in question – ICE from FEMA's routine operating expenses – could not have been used for hurricane response to appropriation limitations," Houlton wrote on Twitter. "DHS / FEMA stand fiscally and operationally ready to support current and future response and recovery needs."

The document released by Merkley, which was supplied to HuffPost, states that more than $ 2.3 million had been diverted from FEMA's "response and recovery" budget. Other funding has been transferred from regional operations, mitigation efforts, preparedness and protection, and mission support budgets.

The award is less than 1 percent of FEMA's budget for the fiscal year, according to the paper, which also states that the agency's "mission impact" would be minimized as FEMA would only be required to "curtail training, travel, public engagement sessions. , IT security support and infrastructure maintenance, and IT investments. "

The Department of Homeland Security has the authority to move to a limited amount of money. In the past, Congress had limited DHS from shuffling more than $ 5 million from one approved program to another known as "reprogramming."

A coalition of human rights groups penned a letter on June 27 asking the Senate Committee on Appropriations to Oppose Attempts to Dismantle the Amount of Funding for Immigrant Detention, accusing the department of dramatically overspending its appropriated budget in ways both morally reprehensible and fiscally irresponsible. "

The $ 10 million of additional funds that DHS aims to expand to 1 percent of the ICE budget for locking up immigrants, which tops $ 1.4 billion.