Trump: The US will not be a migrant camp President Donald Trump signs an executive order to keep families together at the border, but says that the 'zero-tolerance' prosecution policy will continue, during an event in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 20, 2018. Standing behind Trump are Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, left, and Vice President Mike Pence. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Watched by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (L) and Vice President Mike Pence, US President Donald Trump signs an executive order on immigration in the Oval Office of the White House on June 20, 2018 in Washington, DC. - US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order aimed at putting an end to the controversial separation of migrant families at the border, reversing a harsh practice that had earned international scorn. "It's about keeping families together," Trump said at the signing ceremony. "I did not like the sight of families being separated," he added. (Photo by Mandel Ngan / AFP) (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, June 21, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a former Job Corps site that now houses them, on Wednesday, June 20, 2018, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Trump: ICE agents are mean but have heart CHICAGO, IL - JUNE 29: Demonstrators hold a rally in the Little village neighborhood calling for the elimination of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an end to family detentions on June 29, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. Protests have erupted around the country recently as people voice outrage over the separation and detention of undocumented children and their parents. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) Central American immigrants depart ICE custody, pending future immigration court hearings on June 11, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Thousands of undocumented immigrants continue to cross into the U.S., despite the Trump administration's recent "zero tolerance" approach to immigration policy. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) President Donald Trump addresses the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (CNN) — As a potentially catastrophic hurricane bears down on the East Coast of the US, the shifting of $10 million from FEMA’s operating budget to fund immigration detention and deportations is drawing condemnation from Democrats. But that’s a drop in the bucket. The Trump administration this summer quietly redirected $200 million from all over the Department of Homeland Security to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, despite repeated congressional warnings of ICE’s “lack of fiscal discipline” and “unsustainable” spending. The Department of Homeland Security asked for the money, according to a document made public this week by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley. Of the $200 million, the document says $93 million will go to immigrant detention, a 3% budget increase that will fund capacity for an additional 2,300 detainees; and $107 million for “transportation and removal,” or deportations, a 29% budget increase. The move comes as the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive immigration agenda, ramping up arrests of undocumented immigrants and deportations. In addition to this summer’s widely condemned move to separate families at the border, the administration has drawn criticism for arresting a far greater rate of noncriminal undocumented immigrants and seeking to detain them much longer. On Tuesday, the administration announced it would tripling the size of an emergency temporary tent facility to house more immigrant children. The additional $200 million would put ICE’s budget for detention and transportation at more than $3.6 billion. The money came from different parts of DHS, including FEMA, the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, cybersecurity office and Customs and Border Protection. DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the overruns. The $10 million from FEMA did not come from the agency’s disaster relief budget, the agencies noted. “DHS/FEMA stand fiscally and operationally ready to support current and future response and recovery needs,” said FEMA spokesman Tyler Q. Houlton. DHS made the request to move the money around to congressional appropriators, who approved the plan, this summer, according to Detention Watch Network Policy Director Mary Small, whose group obtained the document and provided it to Merkley. Congress sets funding levels for all parts of government through the appropriations process, but funding reprogramming requests like this one are authorized under the law for relatively small amounts of money within agencies. The department then must notify the chairs of the relevant congressional appropriations subcommittees, who must approve. Since Republicans are in the majority for both the House and Senate, those lawmakers lead the committees. Both signed off on this reallocation, Republican and Democratic aides told CNN. Small said the request was part of a broader problem, and accused ICE of “robbing” money for themselves to expand their deportation and detention capabilities even beyond what Congress intends. Congress has long restricted how much money goes to ICE as a way of forcing it to prioritize its immigration enforcement efforts. ICE only has roughly 40,000 spots in detention, meaning it cannot possibly detain every undocumented immigrant in the US. Keeping its funds at a certain level allows Congress to control just how much enforcement can be done. But ICE has overrun that amount and requested more money regularly. Congressional records indicate that ICE reprogrammed $83 million combined in fiscal years 2014 and 2015, and another $127 million in fiscal year 2016. Those requests are not generally not made public. “(It’s) this pattern of misbehavior by ICE where they overspend the amount they have been given by Congress, specifically for immigration detention, and then they make it up by basically robbing other accounts in DHS,” Small said. Lawmakers unhappy with ICE spending The Republican-led Congress has previously reprimanded ICE for its spending habits. The House’s 2017 explanatory statement for homeland security funding for that fiscal year, as preserved in the Congressional Record, called “financial management weaknesses” a continued “particular problem” with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations. “The lack of fiscal discipline and cavalier management of funding for detention operations, evidenced by inaccurate budget formulation and uneven execution, seems to be the result of a perception that ERO is funded by an indefinite appropriation,” the statement said. Similar language is popping up in this year’s appropriations bills. “ICE continues to spend at an unsustainable rate,” the Senate Appropriations Committee report accompanying its proposal for Homeland Security next fiscal year says. “In light of the Committee’s persistent and growing concerns about ICE’s lack of fiscal discipline, whether real or manufactured, and its inability to manage detention resources within the appropriations made by law without the threat of anti-deficiency, the Committee strongly discourages transfer or reprogramming requests to cover ICE’s excesses.” Small says that her group is “on the Hill screaming about this” to encourage Congress to break the pattern. “These are real shenanigans that need to be reined in, not just from a good governance standpoint but also from the standpoint that these are other accounts that need the money,” Small said. CNN’s Ashley Killough and Betsy Klein contributed to this report. ask<doc-sep>NEW A vastly improved search engine helps you find the latest on companies, business leaders, and news more easily.<doc-sep>FEMA Administrator Brock Long and the Department of Homeland Security rejected a Democratic senator’s claim that nearly $10 million was diverted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. WASHINGTON — Political winds are again swirling around FEMA as the organization races to get ready for Hurricane Florence and what’s expected to be a major recovery effort after it makes landfall. FEMA Administrator Brock Long and the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday rejected a Democratic senator’s claim that nearly $10 million was diverted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) charged that the Trump administration was taking money away from FEMA at a critical time — as Florence barreled toward the East Coast — so that more money could go toward immigration enforcement. Other Democrats joined in the criticism, including Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia), who serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “It’s shameful but not surprising that the President would rob FEMA to pay for his callous policy of ripping families apart,” Connolly said in a statement, which also criticized the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year. Connolly accused the president of “putting lives at risk in the middle of hurricane season.” Long said the money transfer cited by Merkley had nothing to do with current efforts to prepare for Florence and doesn’t come from his agency’s disaster relief fund. In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC he accused Merkley of “playing politics.” Merkley made the allegation about the money movement Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” He cited a document outlining $9.8 million in fund transfers in August involving the Department of Homeland Security. A spokesman for DHS denied any disaster relief funding was transferred to immigration enforcement. Under no circumstances was any disaster relief funding transferred from @fema to immigration enforcement efforts. This is a sorry attempt to push a false agenda at a time when the administration is focused on assisting millions on the East Coast facing a catastrophic disaster. — Tyler Q. Houlton (@SpoxDHS) September 12, 2018 Merkley, however, didn’t back down from his assertion on Wednesday. He tweeted that money was taken from FEMA and called it a “scandal.” While the political storm played out, FEMA moved ahead with widespread efforts to get states ready for the hurricane. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) visited FEMA headquarters on Wednesday and received a briefing at the National Response Coordination Center on federal efforts to prepare for Florence. While the projected path of the hurricane lessens its potential impact across the commonwealth, Kaine said people shouldn’t get complacent. “We talked about the path of the storm and the news is that it still poses significant danger in Virginia,” Kaine said in a statement. Kaine visited Puerto Rico last year after Hurricane Maria. He said there were “serious, serious problems” with the emergency response on the island, where nearly 3,000 people died. But he remains hopeful FEMA will be up to the task with Florence. “Look, FEMA has shown the ability when they’re led correctly to do a very good job in emergency response,” Kaine said. “We would expect nothing less than a very strong effort by FEMA in Virginia.” President Trump has defended FEMA’s performance in Puerto Rico, as well as in Texas and Florida, last year. During a White House briefing on Florence this week, the president said the effort in Puerto Rico was “an incredible unsung success.” Copyright © 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.<doc-sep>
The Department of Homeland Security transferred $169 million from other agencies to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the detention and removal of migrants this year, according to a document sent to Congress by DHS. Many of the transfers came from key national security programs, including $1.8 million from the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, $9.8 million from FEMA, $29 million from the U.S. Coast Guard and more than $34 million from several TSA programs. DHS also transferred $33 million from other ICE programs to pay for detention and removal, making the total amount of money transferred $202 million. The FEMA and Coast Guard transfers were first reported by "The Rachel Maddow Show." On Tuesday night, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., announced on the show that nearly $10 million was moved from FEMA's budget to ICE. The budget document Merkley cited, which was later released and publicized by the DHS Watch program at America's Voice, an advocacy group based in Washington, showed a breakdown of how DHS moved money between different programs and agencies. The department has the authority to move funds around internally with the approval of Congress and transfers are not unusual. The total DHS budget for fiscal 2018 was $65 billion; FEMA's total budget was $15.5 billion. DHS spokesperson Tyler Houlton tweeted Tuesday night that, "Under no circumstances was any disaster relief funding transferred from @fema to immigration enforcement efforts. This is a sorry attempt to push a false agenda." He also said that the transferred money came from routine operating expenses and "could not have been used for hurricane response due to appropriation limitations." On Wednesday, FEMA director Brock Long told Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, that none of the $10 million transferred from FEMA to ICE came from the Disaster Relief Fund, saying that Merkley was "playing politics" ahead of Hurricane Florence. "Right now, that money has nothing to do with what you see behind us," he said in an interview from the FEMA response center in Washington. Under no circumstances was any disaster relief funding transferred from @fema to immigration enforcement efforts. This is a sorry attempt to push a false agenda at a time when the administration is focused on assisting millions on the East Coast facing a catastrophic disaster. — Tyler Q. Houlton (@SpoxDHS) September 12, 2018 However, money was taken from the response and recovery, preparedness and protection and mission support operations budgets, which are used to prepare for emergencies like Florence. Those FEMA budgets are for "training for all hazards, preparing our warehouses, making sure we have things ready to go so that we can pre-deploy like you see FEMA doing now," Moira Whelan, FEMA's former chief of staff for the office of Gulf Coast rebuilding, told Maddow on Wednesday. "Taking money away from that operation doesn't just harm [FEMA's hurricane response], it harms us with any disaster we face." DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the other transferred funds. DHS stated in the document that the transfers to ICE were made due to "increasing operational demands." The transfers were requested so ICE could add more than 2,000 detention center beds on top of 38,000 adult beds it predicted it would need in its initial budget request for the year. Those beds cost an additional $93 million above the allocated budget, according to the document provided to Congress. The number of detained migrant children in federally contracted shelters has also increased, growing fivefold in the past year, The New York Times reported Wednesday. ICE also expanded two kinds of flight operations as part of its removal program, increasing the cost of the already $369 million program by $107 million. Its daily air charter services alone increased by 28 percent this year. The AP reported Wednesday that according to the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, DHS notified Congress on June 30 that it wanted to transfer $200 million from other agencies to ICE, including the funds from FEMA. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the transfer was approved by the Republican subcommittee chairs and no Democrats signed off on it. The transfers occurred in August. Ur Jaddou, director of DHS Watch, called the reshuffling of funds an example of "upside down priorities." Jaddou said the document suggests the Trump administration would rather separate families "and detain and deport parents [than] prepare for hurricanes."