A political controversy erupted after President Donald Trump claimed Americans hit hard by Hurricane Helen were losing out on emergency aid money because it was being spent on immigrants.
The White House quickly refuted the claims, accusing Republicans of spreading “bold lies” about disaster response funding.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which he oversees, is short on funds for the remainder of the hurricane season.
President Trump and his allies have expressed anger that government agencies have spent more than $640 million (about £487 million) housing migrants.
But officials noted that the Congress-approved funding is part of an entirely separate program run by Fema, unrelated to disaster relief.
With less than a month until the White House election, Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris are in a close race in a handful of battleground states that will decide the vote, including storm-hit North Carolina and Georgia.
Helen, the worst hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005, hit the Southeast last week, killing at least 225 people and leaving hundreds more missing.
President Trump and Vice President Harris visited some of the affected states.
On Friday, at an event in Evans, Georgia, President Trump said without evidence: “A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and a lot of the money that was supposed to go to North Carolina. , and all the others, and is already gone.”
“It’s gone for people who entered the country illegally, and no one has ever seen anything like it. It’s a shame.”
Fema received funding from Congress — $640 million last year — to provide housing to immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship.
But that cash came through the federal immigration agency, Customs and Border Protection.
The money will be disbursed through Fema’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP) and is separate from the agency’s approximately $20 billion disaster relief fund used to respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters.
FEMA’s disaster relief budget for this year expires at the end of September, and the agency is currently operating on temporary funds while Congress negotiates a new annual budget.
The agency responded to Trump’s claims with a dedicated fact-checking page and a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is wrong. Funds will not be diverted to disaster response,” Fema said in a statement.
The agency says more than $45 million has been donated to communities affected by Hurricane Helen.
Vice President Harris said Friday that Fema had transported more than 11.5 million meals and 12.6 million liters of water in response to Helen, adding that more than 5,600 federal employees were on the ground.
But President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday that billions of dollars in foreign aid will go to Ukraine and not to Americans who lost everything in the storm. “Insanity,” he posted.
Meanwhile, Trump’s critics point out that in 2019, when Trump was president, $155 million was transferred from Fema’s operating budget to fund the deportation of immigrants to Mexico.
