Nogales, Arizona — The U.S. authorities is “completely not” diverting hurricane and catastrophe aid funds to subsidize the care of migrants crossing the southern border, the highest Customs and Border Safety official instructed CBS Information in an unique interview.
Troy Miller, a longtime profession official who has led CBP since 2022, strongly refuted false options amplified by former President Donald Trump and different Republicans that federal catastrophe help has been impacted by a authorities program that reimburses organizations helping migrants processed on the U.S.-Mexico border. That effort, created by Congress and often known as the Shelter and Providers Program, is a joint initiative by CBP and the Federal Emergency Administration Company, or FEMA.
The wrong claims in regards to the Biden administration utilizing FEMA’s catastrophe response funding to course of or resettle migrants have surfaced as communities in North Carolina, Florida and different states reel from hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Requested if there was any fact to these claims, Miller responded, “Completely not. [The] Shelter and Providers Program is permitted, independently funded by Congress. It has nothing to do with the catastrophe aid funds.”
Pressed additional if any catastrophe restoration funds are being diverted in direction of the Shelter and Providers Program for migrants, Miller gave a one-word response: “None.”
Miller additionally stated CBP is helping search-and-rescue efforts within the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in Florida, the place the company has a big footprint. He stated staff from the company’s three most important branches — U.S. Border Patrol, the Workplace of Discipline Operations and Air and Marine Operations — had been prepared to help these affected by the highly effective storm.
“The search-and-rescue groups will go surge into particular areas, get as near the storm as they’ll, then they’re going to truly reply to these requests for rescue,” Miller stated.
The false claims about FEMA and migrant funds
The false and deceptive claims about FEMA’s catastrophe response funding gained steam on-line following the devastation attributable to Hurricane Helene, notably in western North Carolina.
At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, Trump accused the Biden administration of stealing FEMA cash for immigration functions. “They stole the FEMA cash, similar to they stole it from a financial institution, so they might give it to their unlawful immigrants,” he stated.
Trump’s working mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has additionally sought to hyperlink the federal authorities’s response to the hurricanes — and its effectiveness — to the migrant care reimbursement funds.
The Biden administration, Vance claimed on Fox Information, “has turned FEMA successfully into an company that helps to resettle and helps to take care of unlawful immigration.”
The FEMA and CBP migrant care fund, nonetheless, is a program created by Congress, not the Biden administration. Congress first began allocating cash for this function in fiscal yr 2019, in the course of the Trump administration.
The congressionally approved program to reimburse these serving to migrants started in fiscal yr 2019 as a part of FEMA’s Emergency Meals and Shelter Program. In fiscal yr 2023, Congress changed that fund with the present Shelter and Providers Program. It’s funded by CBP and managed by FEMA, in keeping with the Congressional Analysis Service.
Each iterations of the fund have allowed organizations and jurisdictions alongside the southern border and in inside U.S. communities receiving migrants to get reimbursed for his or her efforts to deal with, feed and in any other case help these launched from federal immigration custody. The cash is just not out there to migrants who enter the U.S. illegally with out turning themselves into federal officers.
The funding allotted by Congress for the migrant care grant program is a fraction of the cash appropriated for FEMA’s catastrophe aid efforts. For fiscal yr 2024, for instance, Congress put aside greater than $40 billion for FEMA’s catastrophe response fund. As compared, the company stated final month that it could present $641 million in fiscal yr 2024 to reimburse these sheltering and helping migrants.
No cash from the FEMA catastrophe aid funding pool has been diverted in direction of the migrant care reimbursement initiative, the company has stated.
In 2019, the Trump administration did notify Congress that it could divert funds from totally different components of the Division of Homeland Safety — together with FEMA catastrophe aid cash — in direction of its immigration insurance policies.
The diverted FEMA catastrophe help, the Trump administration instructed Congress on the time, could be used to assemble amenities alongside the U.S.-Mexico border to listen to the asylum claims of migrants positioned within the so-called “Stay in Mexico” program.
