FEMA Tapped Out for Hurricane Recovery as GOP Points to $1B Spent on Migrants

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday that there is not enough money available for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to meet the needs of the communities affected by Hurricane Helene, which has killed more than 160 people.
The funding shortfall has come under scrutiny at a time when at least $640 million in FEMA funding is being spent on assisting communities across the country dealing with an influx of migrants.
Republicans called out this spending after Secretary Mayorkas’ remarks that FEMA was “meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” while adding that the agency did not have enough funding to make it through another hurricane this season.
“This is easy,” Texas Governor Greg Abbot posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Mayorkas and FEMA — immediately stop spending money on illegal immigration resettlement and redirect those funds to areas hit by the hurricane. Put Americans first.”
An account linked to former President Donald Trump’s campaign also posted that it was a “scandal” that this money was being spent on migrants rather than U.S. citizens.
The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) provides funding to non-federal agencies to spend on humanitarian services for non-U.S. citizens. For the 2024 fiscal year, which ended on Monday, $640 million was made available.
The FEMA website says this funding is intended to “support CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) in the safe, orderly and humane release of noncitizen migrants from short-term holding facilities.” The money can be spent on a range of services, including food, shelter, transportation, acute medical care, clothing and translation services.
The budget for the past year was a significant increase from the 2023 fiscal year, when $363 million was allocated. Together, more than $1 billion has been spent on non-citizen services over the past two years.
However, SSP is a small share of FEMA’s overall yearly budget. For the new financial year which began Oct. 1, the agency laid out a need for $33.1 billion.
“These claims are completely false,” a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek Thursday, addressing the accusations by Abbott and others. “As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters.
“The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
FEMA’s fiscal 2025 budget also included $22.7 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), which mostly covers costs for previously declared disasters. This pot does not cover potential future events, given that they are unpredictable.
“As in prior years, the budget assumes future catastrophic events during the budget year will be funded separately with emergency supplemental appropriations,” a FEMA report said in March.
Hurricane Helene struck at the end of one fiscal year and the beginning of another, while Congress was also in the middle of budget negotiations to avoid a government shutdown, complicating the funding troubles.
The DRF was recently facing a $2 billion deficit, far higher than the $650 million allocated to SSP, and that was before Helene made landfall.
On Sept. 25, when Congress passed a resolution to keep the federal government open, extra cash for the DRF was left out — without some members’ knowledge.
“I would have thought that if you were going to do something, disaster funding would’ve been one of the starting points. I have no idea how they got to that,” Representative Mark Amodei, Republican of Nevada and chair of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee told Politico’s E&E News.
“They didn’t call me in and ask me for any advice. Can you believe that?”
While the resolution did include a temporary injection of $20 billion for FEMA to tap into, that cash is not just for the disaster in the past week, but for communities which faced flooding and fires earlier this year as well.
Leaders of both chambers reportedly got together to remove the extra funding in an effort to get the overall resolution passed, while Republicans, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, voted against the resolution anyway, just days before Hurricane Helene hit his state.
“It is getting a little exhausting to watch some House Republicans push again and again for the most extreme, partisan cuts and policies—stuff that is not realistic at all—before learning the same lessons the hard way—yet again,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on the Senate floor before the resolution passed.
In a statement shared with Newsweek Thursday afternoon, Jaclyn Rothenberg, a spokesperson for FEMA, said the agency had what it needed for immediate response and recovery efforts.
“As FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell has said, she has the full authority to spend against the President’s budget, but we’re not out of hurricane season yet so we need to keep a close eye on it,” Rothenberg said. “We may need to go back into immediate needs funding and we will be watching it closely.”
Andy Winkler, leader of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Disaster Response Reform, told The New Republic that more was being expected of the agency, without it necessarily getting any more money to meet those expectations.
“The mission is expanding, and at the same time you’re seeing really difficult workforce shortages at FEMA,” he said. “And so we’re asking them to do more, we expect more, but at the same time, we’re not necessarily giving them the tools and the resources to be able to do that well.”
On Thursday, President Joe Biden said the federal government would cover 100 percent of the cost of recovery efforts in the states affected most by Helene – Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina – for the first 180 days.
Those who lost homes or were experiencing flooding in North Carolina were also potentially eligible for shelter in a hotel or hostel, funded by FEMA.
Update 10/03/24, 4:19 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from the Department of Homeland Security.