Hurricane Helene has killed hundreds of people, destroyed whole towns, and left many people without homes, food, or shelter in the dark.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, says the problem is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency does not have enough money.
While speaking to the press this week, Mayorkas said, “We are meeting the pressing needs with the money that we have. We think that another storm will hit. We don’t have enough money to go around.”
According to the Associated Press, Congress recently put $20 billion into FEMA’s emergency assistance fund.
“FEMA does not have the funds to get through the season and what is coming up,” Mayorkas said before spreading fear about climate change.
President Joe Biden has said that Congress might need to approve more money for emergency help. If the DHS gets more money soon, critics will question where the first funds went, since they know that a lot of them were wasted on helping illegal immigrants break into the country while Mayorkas was in charge.
“Financial support to non-federal organizations to provide humanitarian services to migrants after their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” is what FEMA’s housing and services program does. The goal is to help CBP free noncitizen migrants from short-term holding sites in a safe, organized, and humane way.
This program had a total of $650 million in funds in fiscal year 2024. The total amount of money given was $363.8 million in fiscal year 2023. Through the emergency food and housing program, FEMA used to give hundreds of millions of dollars to refugees.
Before this year, almost $19.6 million from FEMA was used to build a center in San Diego County to help people who are here illegally.
When Mayorkas showed up with empty pockets, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) of Texas wrote, “This is easy. Mayorkas and FEMA need to stop spending money right away on resettling illegal immigrants and send that money to areas that were damaged by the storm. Put the Americans first.”
