The Trump administration has requested native governments and nonprofit organizations that acquired federal grants to establish immigrants they’ve housed, suggesting in a letter that they might have violated human smuggling legal guidelines.
The Division of Homeland Safety has “important considerations” that organizations and governments receiving Federal Emergency Administration Company grants “could also be responsible of encouraging or inducing an alien to return to, enter, or reside in the US” violating immigration legal guidelines, in keeping with a March 11 letter signed by Cameron Hamilton, appearing administrator of FEMA.
The three-page letter was first reported by the Related Press and obtained by The Texas Tribune. Within the letter, Hamilton requested that native governments and organizations which have acquired a grant from FEMA’s Shelter and Providers Program reply inside 30 days with an inventory of the names and phone data for immigrants they’ve assisted.
Hamilton mentioned that transferring ahead, FEMA will ask recipients of those grants to signal an affidavit stating that nobody inside the group or native authorities has any information or suspicion of violating human smuggling legal guidelines.
The letter additionally says FEMA grants can be withheld as DHS conducts its evaluate.
Based on the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group that advocates for immigrant rights, FEMA grants should not immediately given to migrants. As a part of the situations of receiving the cash, the teams and municipal governments can solely present support to migrants who federal immigration officers have already processed.
In fiscal yr 2024, the Division of Homeland Safety awarded $641 million in grants to nonprofits and municipalities to offset prices incurred for companies to lately arrived migrants, according to FEMA’s website.
Greater than 90 recipients in Texas acquired a complete of greater than $133 million in fiscal yr 2024. Amongst them have been totally different chapters of Catholic Charities in Laredo, El Paso, and San Antonio. El Paso, McAllen, Brownsville, San Antonio, Laredo and El Paso County have additionally acquired these FEMA grants.
The top of a Brownsville shelter mentioned the work of compiling an inventory of migrants they assisted could be burdensome since they not acquired the federal funds to pay for employees.
“I can’t rent anyone to work on that,” mentioned Victor Maldonado, govt director of the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Middle. “I want we might have the ability to faucet into that funding as a result of we have now numerous expenditures.”
Different cities, counties and organizations that acquired these grants didn’t instantly reply to requests from The Texas Tribune for remark.
Officers with metropolis and county of El Paso say that they have been awarded FEMA grants however in the end didn’t settle for the cash partly due to the low variety of migrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border lately. Based on FEMA’s web site, the town and county had been awarded greater than $23 million in fiscal yr 2024, which resulted in September.
FEMA’s letter echoes latest efforts by Texas Legal professional Ken Paxton’s workplace to analyze and shut down Texas nonprofits that support migrants, which included demanding the names of migrants they’ve helped and accusing them of violating the state’s human smuggling legal guidelines.
Paxton has mentioned he’s investigating these teams as a result of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott requested it in December 2022. In a letter, Abbott mentioned he needed Paxton’s workplace to analyze “the function of NGOs in planning and facilitating the unlawful transportation of unlawful immigrants throughout our borders.”
In February 2024, Paxton’s workplace demanded paperwork from Annunciation Home, which runs a community of migrant shelters in El Paso, together with an inventory of immigrants the shelter has helped. The legal professional common’s workplace claimed the shelter was violating state regulation by serving to folks suspected of being undocumented immigrants. Paxton’s workplace sued to try to close down Annunciation Home. The case is pending earlier than the state Supreme Courtroom.
Final summer season, Paxton’s workplace additionally tried to depose Sister Norma Pimentel, the manager director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in McAllen. However a state decide denied Paxton’s request.
Paxton additionally sued Houston-based Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes — or FIEL — as a result of the nonprofit criticized Texas and the Trump administration’s immigration insurance policies. A state decide denied Paxton’s request to close down the group.
Paxton appealed each instances, that are at present pending in state court docket.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media group that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public coverage, politics, authorities and statewide points.
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