Campaign Action
The Trump administration is making its priorities clear, funneling money into ICE detention centers from other agencies’ budgets—including, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) highlighted Tuesday, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A Trump administration spokesman strongly denied that the money being shifted from FEMA would hamper the agency’s ability to respond to hurricanes; according to a document Merkley made public, “FEMA will curtail training, travel, public engagement sessions, IT security support and infrastructure maintenance, and IT investments in the legacy grants systems for transition to the Grants Management Modernization Program.”
Even if we take the Trump administration at its word that the $9.75 million transfer from FEMA to ICE won’t affect hurricane response, there are still questions to be asked. Questions like “but will the non-effect be because Trump hurricane response is so bad that nothing much could make it worse?” and “are you lying to us?” (Never fully take the Trump administration at its word.)
Also, and this is not a question: “Yeah, but we’re still seeing your priorities in action when you shift money from emergency management training to detention centers for your vicious immigration policies.” This is the policy: direct money from other departments to have more and more money to detain and imprison people whose only crime, in many cases, is misdemeanor border crossing that they were essentially forced into by the Trump administration having blocked legal crossing points to make it difficult for asylum-seekers to enter the country.
And $9.75 million is a drop in a federal agency’s budget, but as a statement that persecuting immigrants is a top function of this government, it’s huge.