Federal Emergency Management Agency Having EMERGENCY.
20 years after Katrina, nostalgia for 'Brownie' and his heck of a job.
Friday will mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans, which was accompanied by the levees failing, flooding 80 percent of the city. The natural and human-made disaster was compounded by a widespread failure of government at most levels to protect and get help to the 100,000 to 150,000 people who weren’t able to evacuate, most of them the poorest residents, who had no access to a car or otherwise couldn’t leave.
With that in mind, 191 current and former employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent a letter to Congress Monday, warning that the improvements in disaster preparedness that grew out of Katrina are being wiped out by the Trump administration. The letter called on Congress to return FEMA to its status as a standalone Cabinet agency, as it was folded into DHS when that mega-agency was created after 9/11, to defend FEMA from further cuts and impoundments of funding, and to protect FEMA employees from “politically motivated firings.”
The declaration says the signatories hope Congress will take action to reverse or head off Trump’s attacks on FEMA “in time to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people such an event would represent.”
Not surprisingly, the administration responded by suspending about 30 of the 36 FEMA staffers who signed their names to the letter, placing them on administrative leave Tuesday evening. It’s possible the agency will try to similarly identify and punish the 146 other current employees who withheld their names out of a very well-founded fear of retribution. The emails informing signatories of their suspensions didn’t give any reason, but reassured the employees that the action “is not a disciplinary action and is not intended to be punitive.” The next line, we assume, said “We come in peace!” as the email vaporized the reader.
In a statement, (acting) FEMA Press Secretary Daniel Llargués smeared the signatories of the letter, whining that “some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” accusing them of having “forgotten that their duty is to the American people not entrenched bureaucracy,” so there. Which is a weird thing to say about a letter that emphasized how FEMA’s new, inexperienced management is a danger to the American people.
Colette Delawalla of Stand Up for Science, the advocacy group that helped publicize the letter, said the suspensions of the signatories were clearly retaliatory, and that, “Once again, we are seeing the federal government retaliate against our civil servants for whistle-blowing — which is both illegal and a deep betrayal of the most dedicated among us.”
She also noted that two of the suspended employees were among the FEMA workers who were part of the agency’s response to July’s flash floods in Texas, and we guess they’d know how badly the administration’s cost-cutting and interference with normal emergency response hurt people.
Need Help? Papers Please!
In other disastrous disaster aid news, the Washington Post reported Wednesday (gift link) that the Department of Homeland Security has imposed new rules in contracts with states and volunteer organizations that receive federal funding, prohibiting them from providing aid to undocumented immigrants. The rules also require the groups to cooperate with immigration officials and not get in the way of deportations.
Apparently Immigration Nazi Stephen Miller or one of his acolytes decided that immigrants are trying to come to America in hopes of having their roof blown off in a hurricane so they can get a nice blue tarp and a bowl of soup.
Several disaster assistance groups, FEMA employees and emergency management experts said the new requirements in the department’s fiscal 2025 aid contracts would make it harder for nonprofits to help the most vulnerable people in the aftermath of a disaster.
According to the new documents, disaster aid nonprofits receiving federal funding must agree they won’t “operate any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.”
In other words, disaster aid groups are now being deputized to help out with the administration’s mass deportation crusade, and will apparently have to check every aid recipient’s immigration status before giving them a blanket, a hot meal, or space in an emergency shelter. Why yes, that is completely insane in the context of a disaster, where many people lose everything. We have no idea what kind of proof of citizenship will be required to meet the rules, but the idea that soup kitchens and shelters will have to keep records on each person they help is crazy on its face.
That may be unconstitutional, several disaster experts said, pointing out the language might “violate some local and state laws that prevent asking about a person’s immigration status.” But such trivial matters as law and the Constitution are as nothing in Great Leader’s quest to make America immigrant-free.
The Post didn’t go into detail on whether groups would be required to return flood victims with inadequate documentation to the roofs or tree branches where they were initially rescued, although the article does say that, according to an anonymous FEMA insider, the DHS rules could be enforced well beyond nonprofits, and “could apply to all applicants, sub-applicants and even other federal agencies that work with FEMA, such as search-and-rescue groups.” So perhaps people will need to remember their birth certificates before they flee to the roofs of their flooding homes.
Or more likely, disaster aid groups may be expected to follow the same rules as ICE sweeps have: Just don’t help anyone who speaks Spanish, has an accent, or is too brown, and if the courts call that illegal racial profiling, ignore the courts.
The article notes that federal disaster funding goes first to states, which must accept the immigration rules as a term of getting the money. Then the states make arrangements with nonprofits like the American Red Cross or the Salvation Army to provide direct services. The new DHS rules require the states (or other local governments, like tribes or counties) to demand all contractors or nonprofits follow the new Papers Please rules.
Nonprofits like the Red Cross or those Armies of Salvation, the Post adds,
often serve communities with large Latino populations, where people often have trouble getting federal aid because they are uninsured or live in multigenerational households so they can’t all apply to FEMA. They serve those who have lost their homes or incomes after a catastrophic event but are not in the United States legally. Such humanitarian organizations typically do not ask about religious beliefs, political affiliation or documentation status when offering aid.
So obviously you can see why those people need to suffer more. For what it’s worth (nothing, to the administration at least) the American Red Cross’s “Statement on Impartiality” is very clear that, as a member of the global Red Cross/Red Crescent network, the group will serve everyone who needs help:
During a crisis, people need help to stay safe, no matter their nationality, cultural background or citizenship status. When an emergency strikes, the Red Cross will deliver help to whomever needs it. As part of its humanitarian mission, the American Red Cross will feed, shelter, provide emotional support and other assistance without regard to race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or citizenship status. The Red Cross is a charity, not a government agency, and individuals who have disaster-caused needs do not need to be American citizens to access our services.
Red Cross workers will not question individuals about their citizenship status, nor will they request birth certificates, immigration papers, passports, social security cards or similar documents that could be interpreted as being used to identify the nationality or immigration status of people seeking assistance. The Red Cross will only request documents to verify an individual’s identity and where they lived before a disaster when providing financial assistance.
And then Stephen Miller’s deaths-head face, a paper-white mask of evil, popped up and hissed, “guess you’ll be doing that without taxpayer help, you communists.”
Further, the Post says that another new DHS rule requires all award recipients must agree not to hold back information on immigration status from DHS, and that aid groups
are also barred from “harboring, concealing, or shielding from detection illegal aliens”; have to agree to “provide access to detainees, such as when an immigration officer seeks to interview a person who might be a removable alien”; and not leak or publicize an enforcement operation.
So far, it doesn’t look like the rules explicitly require the groups to shriek and point like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers if they encounter someone without papers, but we’re sure that’s next.
Not surprisingly, aid groups aren’t eager to dive into being deputy deporters, especially since many are faith-based.
“We see this as a free-exercise issue under our First Amendment rights,” said Peter Gudaitis, the executive director of New York Disaster Interfaith Services. “First, the federal government has never attempted to tell the nonprofit sector who we can and cannot serve. Further, as a faith-based organization we have the right to determine who we serve.”
Guess they’ll just have to rethink their heretical faiths if they want to get along with Trump and Miller’s version of Christianity, in which Christ said “whatever you do to the least of these, make sure you hit ‘em harder, don’t be too nice.”
On top of everything else, the new rules forbid anything that the Trump administration thinks will “advance or promote DEI and/or DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) or discriminatory equity ideology,” so we guess hiring Spanish-speaking aid workers or having wheelchair ramps at shelters will be right out, too.
Aid groups also worry the new rules will mean they’ll be barred from helping anyone in mixed-status families. After all, if they provide a hot meal to a citizen who’s the child or spouse of an undocumented person, what’s to stop them from illegally stashing a piece of bread in their pocket to give to their criminal lawbreaker parents or siblings later?
[NYT (gift link) / CBS News / WaPo (gift link)]
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Just a reminder that Stephen Miller went into politics because he lacks the upper body strength to strangle prostitutes.
"The cruelty is the point," needs to be abandoned for, "The cruelty gets them off."
Because that's where we are.