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Floods, storms, wildfires, and other disasters can strike in every state and district, and members of Congress in both parties have incentives to improve the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the nation’s premier disaster relief outfit. However, current FEMA officials in the Trump administration were notably absent from a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on bipartisan legislation to reform the agency, despite broad support for the bill among Republicans.

During the July 15 hearing, Democrats slammed President Donald Trump for politicizing FEMA by denying federal disaster relief to blue states and diverting personnel and resources to bolster his deadly mass deportation campaign. Instead of assisting disaster victims, FEMA employees were directed to help immigration enforcement agencies recruit new officers, plan raids and patrols, and process arrestees at notorious prison camps in apparent violation of federal law, according to an investigative report submitted by House Democrats.

Not a single administrator attended the hearing to provide a response on behalf of FEMA or the White House. FEMA also did not respond to inquiries from Truthout by the time this story was published.

“The politicization of FEMA by the president and his minions is absolutely wrong, and this committee ought to hold the administration to account on that as well as to these other issues,” said Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat from California. “It’s got to stop.”

Hearings on federal agencies virtually always include current administrators alongside expert witnesses, in order to allow Congress to perform its constitutional oversight duties. FEMA has been a consistent source of embarrassing headlines for Trump, who initially moved to eliminate the agency in 2025 before backing off.

Instead of assisting disaster victims, FEMA employees were directed to help immigration enforcement agencies recruit new officers, plan raids and patrols, and process arrestees at notorious prison camps.

Instead of assisting disaster victims, FEMA employees were directed to help immigration enforcement agencies recruit new officers, plan raids and patrols, and process arrestees at notorious prison camps.

“No one currently working for FEMA is here to talk about how we reform FEMA,” said Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat from Michigan, where recent floods destroyed homes. “That’s a critical point.”

Beginning in August 2025, the Trump administration “activated a sustained deployment” of FEMA personnel to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) carry out Trump’s deadly mass deportation campaign across multiple states, according to an investigation released by Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona on July 10.

The deployment followed the deepest reduction of FEMA’s workforce in the agency’s history. FEMA lost 5,000 personnel since January 2025 as part of the broader purge of federal workers by the White House and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE — but contracts for certain workers were automatically renewed if they agreed to work for ICE and CBP, creating what the report called a “coercive dynamic.”

Trump’s FEMA Guts Disaster Mitigation While Funding Migrant Jails

Flush with cash from Congress, the Trump administration in 2025 engaged in a massive buildout of immigration jails and detention camps to fill with undocumented people while rapidly recruiting thousands of new ICE and........

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