President Donald Trump’s administration is set to pull $271 million from the Department of Homeland Security — including $155 million allocated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund — to pay for immigrant detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico, multiple news outlets reported Tuesday.
These funds would reportedly allow the government to fund nearly 6,800 additional beds for immigrant detainees.
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The move comes after Congress declined the administration’s request to include additional funding for its border security measures in a disaster relief bill passed in June. According to NBC News, the Trump administration believes it has the authority to reallocate these funds in lieu of congressional approval.
The announcement comes at a precarious time as hurricane season is ratcheting up and Puerto Rico is bracing for Tropical Storm Dorian.
On Tuesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned Trump’s fund diversion effort, describing it as “brazen theft.”
“The President’s brazen assault on the Congress’s most fundamental Constitutional power, the power of the purse, is cruel, deeply dangerous and made in bad faith,” she said in a statement. “Stealing from appropriated funds is always unacceptable, but to pick the pockets of disaster relief funding in order to fund an appalling, inhumane family incarceration plan is staggering ― and to do so on the eve of hurricane season is stunningly reckless.”
Source: Trump Administration Sending Millions From Disaster Relief Fund To Southern Border
