Trump administration diverted nearly $10 million from FEMA to ICE detention program, according to DH

[neohippie]

Source: Washington Post

“This is a scandal,” Merkley said in a statement. “At the start of hurricane season — when American citizens in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still suffering from FEMA’s inadequate recovery efforts — the administration transferred millions of dollars away from FEMA. And for what? To implement their profoundly misguided ‘zero-tolerance’ policy. It wasn’t enough to rip thousands of children out of the arms of their parents — the administration chose to partly pay for this horrific program by taking away from the ability to respond to damage from this year’s upcoming and potentially devastating hurricane season.”

The “monster,” as Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina labeled the storm gathering strength off the southeastern Atlantic coast, threatens enormous damage and a replay of last year’s devastating hurricane season, in which FEMA was woefully unprepared for the catastrophe that befell Puerto Rico, according to an after-action report by the agency. Meanwhile, a year after Hurricane Harvey brought the worst rainstorm in the nation’s history to the Houston area, 50 percent of lower-income respondents in a survey conducted this summer said they weren’t getting the help they needed.

As Trump pledged Tuesday that “We are sparing no expense” in preparing for Florence, DHS did not dispute the authenticity of the document in a statement posted on Twitter. The department acknowledged that funds had been redirected but said the transfer did not jeopardize relief efforts.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/12/document-shows-the-trump-administration-diverted-nearly-10-million-from-fema-to-ice-detention-program/?utm_term=.45fe2a0f1c2b

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They created a fake crisis at our border and claim that asylum seekers are criminals and need these funds to jail them, meanwhile

99% of Hurricane Matthew claims to FEMA for damage in NC were denied by Trump, and they are misappropriating funds from FEMA to fund more family separation

[cstanleytech]

1. I thought misappropriating funds from one agency to another was a crime

without the approval of Congress?

[Farmer-Rick]

2. It is.....

At least for any normal administration. That's why congress approves a budget and handles the debt ceiling. Congress is suppose to control the purse strings according to the Constitution.

All funding bills must originate in the house and no money can be drawn without an appropration bill or law. It is in the US Constitution.

But then Trump does so much that is illegal, what's one more crime among RepubliCONS?

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Here are some details from the OP link

<...>

The reallocation of public money is documented in a “Transfer and Reprogramming” notification prepared this fiscal year by the Department of Homeland Security, the parent department of ICE, as the agency is known. It was made public by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon in an appearance Tuesday on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” as Hurricane Florence barreled toward the Carolinas.

<...>

The precise timing of the reallocation is unclear, as the document, which refers to Fiscal Year 2018, does not include an exact date. The document’s file information indicates that it was created in late June, the first month of the Atlantic hurricane season. A Senate aide told The Post that the fiscal notice appears to have been written in June, sent to Congress at the end of the month and approved sometime between July and September.

DHS is required to notify the House and Senate appropriations committees of reprogramming of funds in excess of $5 million, according to a 2009 appropriations measure. Merkley, who is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee but not the Homeland Security subcommittee, told Maddow that the document he released was “the notification document that would have come to the Appropriations Committee, specifically to the chair of [the subcommittee on] Homeland Security.”

<...>

As for FEMA, the notifying document states that the “Mission impact” will be “minimized,” as the agency will scale back training, travel, public engagement sessions and IT security support and infrastructure maintenance. A spokesman for DHS responded to Merkley’s allegations in a series of tweets late Tuesday, acknowledging the budgetary reallocation but arguing that the funds in question came from “FEMA’s routine operating expenses” and “could not have been used for hurricane response due to appropriations limitations.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/12/document-shows-the-trump-administration-diverted-nearly-10-million-from-fema-to-ice-detention-program/?utm_term=.f1f19e0cb404

So someone slid it to Congress and it was approved (imagine that).

[neohippie]

6. also from the story

Former DHS and FEMA officials, however, disputed the spokesman’s claim that the money in question was distinct from “hurricane response,” saying these funds were critical to the agency’s overall mission of storm preparedness and response, even if they were not explicitly earmarked for disaster relief.

“Anyone who knows FEMA knows it’s parsing words,” Moira Whelan, a former chief of staff in the Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding at Homeland Security’s National Joint Information Center, told The Post. The disaster relief funding left untouched by the transfer, Whelan said, covers post-storm assistance and the rebuilding of public structures, while “Response and Recovery” money tapped for the transfer pays for plans, logistics, supply-chain management and after-action reports that seek to improve on previous seasons, said Whelan, who is also a former official with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The nearly $10 million diverted to ICE comes from a roughly $1 billion operating budget that supports much of FEMA’s efforts beyond the immediate response to a declared emergency, said a former FEMA official who asked not to be identified because he still does business with the agency. That includes staff, meetings and exercises, he said — all crucial to readiness for the next hurricane season. One example, the former official said, was the network of warehouses operated by FEMA across the country, which requires staff and supplies.

[Achilleaze]

3. Hell, republicans done squandered about $300 million on golf

to pamper their "billionaire" "leader" Dirty Donny* So that makes the $10 million diversion seem like chickenfeed. But in both cases, the republicans are stealing our tax money from helping our neighbors in the Carolinas, etc, by screwing around with our hard-earned tax money. Phooey on that.


* aka republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief

[underpants]

4. Republicans and conservatives hate FEMA

Always have. They think basically "tough luck. Pull your own ass up"

[erronis]

9. But all the vacation home owners on the seashore are happy to take federal $s

And most of them aren't normal american families just trying to get by.

Just clipped from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-carolina-didnt-like-science-on-sea-levels-so-passed-a-law-against-it

North Carolina has a long, low-lying coastline and is considered one of the US areas most vulnerable to rising sea levels.

But dire predictions alarmed coastal developers and their allies, who said they did not believe the rise in sea level would be as bad as the worst models predicted and said such forecasts could unnecessarily hurt property values and drive up insurance costs.

As a result, the state’s official policy, rather than adapting to the worst potential effects of climate change, has been to assume it simply won’t be that bad. Instead of forecasts, it has mandated predictions based on historical data on sea level rise.

[lark]

7. Fucking murderers.

Taking money from people in dire need due to natures' storm created devastation and use it to grossly overpay his top 4 donor companies to kidnap, cage, torture and drug Hispanic children and babies. He's figured out how to profit from racist hate and that's the most important thing in drumpf world. He also actively wants people to die who didn't (couldn't) vote for him, so gave almost no help to PR and personally impeded the progress so shipping companies could meet their budgets. FEMA was totally incompetent in PR, would only use their drivers and their trucks and refused to go up into the mountains where th situation was most dire. 3,000 people died because he would not spend any money to prevent the deaths.

[Bayard]

8. Not paying for funerals

Saw on Rachel last night that about 85% of people in Puerto Rico that applied for funeral assistance from FEMA to bury their dead were denied.

So what happened to those bodies? How horrifying for families that are already in shock.

[Gothmog]

10. This will backfire on trump

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. It's not just FEMA: ICE quietly got an extra $200 million

Washington (CNN)As a potentially catastrophic hurricane bears down on the East Coast of the US, the shifting of $10 million from FEMA's operating budget to fund immigration detention and deportations is drawing condemnation from Democrats.

But that's a drop in the bucket.

The Trump administration this summer quietly redirected $200 million from all over the Department of Homeland Security to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, despite repeated congressional warnings of ICE's "lack of fiscal discipline" and "unsustainable" spending.

The Department of Homeland Security asked for the money, according to a document made public this week by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley. Of the $200 million, the document says $93 million will go to immigrant detention, a 3% budget increase that will fund capacity for an additional 2,300 detainees; and $107 million for "transportation and removal," or deportations, a 29% budget increase.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/12/politics/ice-more-money-fema-dhs/index.html