Trump admin reallocating FEMA funds for migrant holding

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - The Trump administration is shifting $271 million from the Department of Homeland Security, including disaster relief funding, to pay for immigration detention space and hearing locations, according to a report published Tuesday.

That includes $155 million that will be pulled from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) disaster funding to pay for temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers that the administration has forced to wait in Mexico, NBC News reported.

An additional $116 million from the budget of the Department of Homeland Security, which FEMA falls under, will be reallocated to fund the migrant proceedings including 6,800 additional beds.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately returned Anadolu Agency’s requests for comment.

Congress was notified of the reallocations, which were not requested, as the administration contends it can swap the funds because federal lawmakers did not include the allocation for the beds in an emergency spending bill for the U.S.'s southern border that was passed in June.

The $116 million in Homeland Security funding was previously allocated for Coast Guard operations and flight security, NBC News reported.

The funding diversion comes as Tropical Storm Dorian gathers strength and nears Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory that was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017. It is still recovering from the widespread damage and flooding wrought by the hurricane two years ago.

Democratic congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard wrote to the department following its notification to object to the shift in funding.

"The Department has provided no substantiation for a claim that this transfer is necessary due to ‘extraordinary circumstances that imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property,'" the congresswoman wrote in a letter viewed by NBC News.