Dozens of FEMA staffers are being forced to help ICE vet and hire thousands more masked deportation agents. It’s not like hurricane season is already here or anything
As hurricane season approaches, the nearly 45% of Americans who live in the path of potentially catastrophic damage should know that the federal agency tasked with disaster preparedness and recovery is busy at work – for Stephen Miller.
The Trump administration has ordered dozens of workers from the already-downsized FEMA agency to help ICE hire as many as 10,000 additional masked agents as part of Miller’s mass family separation agenda, The Washington Post reports. Workers who don’t agree to the reassignments could reportedly be “subject to removal from Federal service.”
“To support this effort, select FEMA employees will temporarily be detailed to ICE for 90 days to assist with hiring and vetting,” self-deportation enthusiast DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the outlet. “Their deployment will NOT disrupt FEMA’s critical operations. FEMA remains fully prepared for Hurricane Season.” But the actual professionals aren’t so sure about that.
Recall that FEMA has already lost at least 2,000 employees due completely unnecessary cuts carried out by the Trump administration’s so-called “DOGE” outfit. Half a dozen current and former FEMA officials now tell The Washington Post that losing dozens more FEMA employees to ICE, “even for a few months, will greatly slow operations while the already much-reduced agency is juggling multiple ongoing disaster declarations, including the historic Texas floods.”
The disaster in Texas last month over the July 4th holiday weekend resulted in the deaths of more than 120 people, including more than 35 children. The New York Times reports that in the immediate hours after the catastrophic flooding, FEMA failed to pick up nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster line due to the abrupt firing of hundreds of contractors tasked with helping carry out this work.
“The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter,” The NY Times said. “Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Hurricane season is also here, and is expected to result in as many as ten hurricanes through November. Hurricane Erin, which exploded from a Category 1 into a Category 5 storm overnight before being downgraded to a Category 2, “prompted evacuation orders and states of emergency in two North Carolina counties,” NPR reported. While Erin won’t strike land, it’s still strong enough that it’s threatening the East Coast with “life-threatening surf and rip currents,” CBS News reported.
You’d think that with the possibility of nearly a dozen storms risking American lives from now through November, Gulf states would be preparing to protect their citizens. Instead, Trump’s political allies are aiding in his unprovoked invasion of Washington, D.C. There’s your actual government waste, Elon.
You know, it's hurricane season. Erin developed from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 almost overnightSo you'd think Governors of Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi might be worried about the potential of massive stormsbut, their fealty is to Trump not their constituents
— Joe Sudbay (@joesudbay.bsky.social) 2025-08-18T22:52:34.349Z
“The Trump administration’s decision to transfer FEMA personnel to ICE as we enter peak hurricane season is a reckless move that puts lives at risk, especially in Latino communities that are disproportionately vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding,” Elice Rojas-Cruz, managing director of Climate Power En Acción, told El País. But the administration’s waste and mismanagement of FEMA resources doesn’t stop there.
In late July, the administration said FEMA would distribute more than half a billion dollars to states to help them set up their own version of the Everglades detention camp, which has been rife with human rights abuses. “This will relieve overcrowding in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s short-term holding facilities,” the administration claimed. Has it considered addressing overcrowding by not traveling hundreds of miles from the border inland to Bakersfield, California, in order to harass and detain community members using practices that violate our Constitution? Just a thought.
We know from past disasters that the same immigrant workers being targeted for mass abduction, detention, and deportation have been critical to recovery efforts. In fact, immigrant workers have been so essential to disaster recovery, that a statue in New Orleans honors the Latino workers who helped rebuild the city following Hurricane Katrina.
“We watched the destruction that happened because of the storm and we wondered ‘how in the world are we ever gonna come back,’” one council member said in 2018. “But thanks to so many people who came and helped us and the influx of Latino workers that we had in our city, we were able to come back, and not only New Orleans but surrounding parishes as well.”
In L.A., damage stemming from wildfires could reach up to $164 billion, according to one study. Like in New Orleans following Katrina, it’ll be immigrant workers, with their skills and ingenuity, who will be essential in helping rebuild our communities from the ashes. The difference here is that they’ll be doing this critical work under an unprecedented threat of mass deportation.
“As during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is asking its immigrant workforce to perform essential tasks,” as León Krauze wrote at The Post earlier this year. “The least it can do in return is to grant them peace and security instead of subjecting them to persecution and discrimination.” Persecution and discrimination that hurts us all.
“FEMA has already lost thousands of employees,” Rojas-Cruz continued to El País. “The personnel who will be assigned to ICE play a vital role in rapidly mobilizing local disaster response, and withdrawing them delays crucial support when every second counts. This is not just poor planning, but a political maneuver with real and dangerous consequences for millions of Americans.”
