As President Donald Trump blasted out lies about the Federal Emergency Management Agency giving money to undocumented immigrants after Hurricane Helene, advocates for immigrants shook their heads in disbelief.
The truth is that the federal government has long gone out of its way to block undocumented people from receiving help. Federal agencies are barred by law from giving them in-cash disaster aid. Time after time when a hurricane or wildfire hits, immigrants are left to fend for themselves.
Mutual aid groups have stepped in to fill the gap and, increasingly, they are pioneering a model where state governments distribute aid money through nonprofits.
With Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida, which has 1.2 million undocumented immigrants, activists are questioning why the feds do so little to help the same immigrant communities that help to rebuild after storms.
Government, at all levels, should do more, said Democratic New York Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, who helped create a state-level fund for Hurricane Ida victims in her state.
“We are very well and OK as a society having people work for us in our farms, feeding us, making sure that we’re OK,” Cruz said. “But the minute a natural disaster destroys their lives, all of a sudden, we’re going to turn around and say, do you have papers?”
Trump’s Latest Lie
North Carolina residents were still searching for lost loved ones after Helene when Trump rolled out his latest lie at an October 3 rally: The Biden administration “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
There was not a sliver of truth to the claim, which Vice President Kamala Harris called “the height of irresponsibility and, frankly, callousness.”
Former top FEMA officials were quick to dismiss Trump’s remarks.
“How many times do you have to say it’s not true?”
“How many times do you have to say it’s not true?” said former FEMA director Craig Fugate, who led the agency under President Barack Obama. “FEMA can only spend money that has been authorized and appropriated by Congress. You can’t spend money on anything that Congress hasn’t appropriated money for, and you cannot spend it any way other than what you’re authorized to spend it.”
Federal law expressly forbids FEMA from giving cash aid to undocumented immigrants. That means they are not eligible for either the $750 the agency offers to cover immediate needs such as clothing and food, or the much larger sums it distributes later on to help rebuild homes.
“It’s prohibited by law. And that’s a huge issue, in trying to help people that have been impacted,” Fugate said. “You can’t help some folks.”
“Filling a Gap”
There are some avenues for undocumented people to pursue short-term, non-cash assistance.
In addition, they can apply for cash aid on behalf of children born in the U.S. While the agency — which is housed under the Department of Homeland Security — says it will not “proactively” provide information to law enforcement and immigration agencies, the idea of forking over personal information to the feds scares off even some immigrants with legal status.
“I see barriers not just for undocumented immigrants, but also for persons who are near to them, for family members, for folks who are concerned that their own interactions with federal assistance might harm or endanger loved ones,” said Alessandra Jerolleman, the director of research at the Center on Environment, Land, and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. “There’s a lot of misinformation and fear.”
In response, immigrant aid groups have taken to collecting donations through PayPal, GoFundMe, and other channels for distribution to community members in need.
In 2017, after a wildfire ravaged Sonoma County, California, where many undocumented workers pick grapes, community groups set up the first UndocuFund, which distributed $7.5 million to nearly 3,000 households. Another fund aided immigrants in California’s Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, which were hit hard by the 2017-2018 Thomas Fire. Both funds also took active roles responding to the Covid pandemic.
Beatrice Camacho, the director of the UndocuFund in Sonoma County, said her ad hoc group morphed into a permanent presence due to repeated disasters.
“We are filling a gap. Our government should be the ones that are providing this aid to folks,” she said. “What we saw with Helene, we’re seeing with Milton — a once-in-a-hundred-year hurricane that has strengthened in a matter of hours — it’s only going to continue to happen.”
“Back on Their Feet”
During the pandemic, the UndocuFunds served as a template for California to set up the nation’s first state-level pandemic relief fund for undocumented immigrants ineligible for stimulus checks and unemployment, said Michael Méndez, an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied disaster relief.
“There was a little skeleton network or infrastructure that was developed three years prior, from those wildfires and flooding,” Méndez said. “They were able to put out pressure to the governor’s office, with support from legislators in Sacramento.”
In 2021, when Hurricane Ida swamped basement apartments housing immigrants in New York City, Gov. Kathy Hochul created a $17 million fund meant to help the undocumented immigrants ineligible for federal aid.
Cruz, the New York assemblymember, said she conceived of the idea after hearing from a senior citizen who had lost everything in her basement apartment in the storm.
“The governor, to her credit, knew that people who were New Yorkers, who were taxpayers who were supporting our economy, needed a humanitarian hand,” Cruz said. “This was a way to get people back on their feet.”
So far, however, Cruz has not succeeded in convincing state legislators to make the fund permanent. Meanwhile, the amount of aid that states have at their disposal pales in comparison to the federal government.
“Programs like this aren’t the end solution,” said Becca Telzak, deputy director of Make the Road New York, one of the nonprofits tapped to help distribute aid money. “Obviously, the end solution should be changing the policy so that they’re eligible for government relief.”