They’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars on services for illegal immigrants as Americans struggle after Helene.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is pleading with lawmakers to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) more money after the disaster relief agency emptied the coffers to provide services for illegal immigrants.
“FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season,” Mayorkas told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday, with hurricane season running from June 1 through Nov. 30.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” he said, after Hurricane Helene brought devastation to the southeastern United States.
The storm crashed into Florida as a Category 4 hurricane last week and poured a record-breaking 40 trillion gallons of water across the South, washing away entire Appalachian towns. Ryan Cole, the assistant director for emergency services in Buncombe County where Asheville became isolated due to broken roads and no power or cell service, characterized the aftermath as “Biblical.”
“You’ve heard us say, ‘catastrophic devastation within our county.’ I would go a little bit further and say we have Biblical devastation through the county,” Cole said Sunday. “We’ve had Biblical flooding here, and it has been extremely significant.”
But while communities across southern Appalachia scramble to rebuild following the torrential downpour that killed roughly 200 people, federal relief efforts have come up short. One woman named Alyse Adams, who spoke to NBC News about her family stuck in the North Carolina mountains, said she’s been stunned by the slow response from the Biden-Harris administration.
