ICYMI: Families Left Without Disaster Relief As Trump Prioritizes Immigration Raids Over Recovery
CHICAGO, IL — New reporting from the Washington Post reveals that under the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda, dozens of FEMA workers were forced to abandon disaster relief efforts in Chicago neighborhoods devastated by water damage because ICE agents were conducting raids in those same communities.
Instead of helping Americans recover from disasters, the Trump administration is pulling FEMA personnel off critical relief work to fuel mass deportation operations. The administration has redirected hundreds of FEMA staff to assist ICE, attempted to block states and nonprofits from helping disaster victims who are migrants, and even detained firefighters while they were actively fighting fires. Meanwhile, Illinois continues to be denied the disaster relief it desperately needs.
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Washington Post: FEMA workers pulled from Chicago storm damage surveys because of ICE
In early November, Illinois and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials pulled dozens of personnel back from surveying flood-damaged neighborhoods in Chicago because immigration agents were conducting patrols nearby, according to messages reviewed by The Post and four people with knowledge of the situation.
The shift meant about 10 groups of federal, state, county and local workers had to stop work surveying hundreds of homes that sustained heavy water damage in parts of the city hit hard by recent storms — assessments that help the federal agency document disaster impacts, and can help make a case for why an area may need help paying for recovery.
Last month, the Trump administration denied the state’s initial request for a disaster declaration meant to help its communities rebound from back-to-back punishing summer storms, concluding there was “insufficient severity,” according to a letter obtained by The Post. Illinois then asked FEMA to conduct additional damage analysis to further document the scores of homes still recovering, many with mold and other issues, in hopes the president would reconsider. Parts of Illinois, including Cook County’s Chicago, experienced severe flooding in July and again in August.
In internal messages, FEMA workers shared that they saw ICE vehicles or heard members of the community reacting to their possible presence. Concerned, Illinois officials scrambled to prepare new work assignments to prevent “unnecessary risks,” the messages show. Ultimately, “out of an abundance of caution,” the coordinating federal and state agencies pulled about 50 people from the field for the rest of that day.
Near Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood, a very “hard hit area,” nearly everyone who lived on one street “had sewer back up in basements, people were struggling with mold in their homes,” one FEMA staffer who was knocking on doors recalled. The teams were not able to return and survey those households in the following days.
The incident in Chicago is the latest example of how the Department of Homeland Security’s ramped up mission to detain and deport undocumented people has hampered FEMA’s work. The administration has reassigned hundreds of FEMA staff to ICE to assist on mass deportations, attempted to stop states and nonprofits from assisting migrants who have suffered in a disaster, and detained contracted firefighters in the middle of an active blaze.
When knocking on doors, the agency’s workers will often tell residents, “we are not immigration, we are here to help,” that official said. To do that and then have ICE in the area “1) completely removes the trust you just tried to build with the community and 2) is absolutely terrifying for the people who want to help, not hurt.”
Two staffers interviewing residents that day said they heard stories of people who had been living without working water heaters, furnaces, washers and dryers for the past few months. Landlords who relied on income from renting out their basements were struggling financially after their tenants moved out. Those who stayed were dealing with the aftermath of water that submerged most of their belongings.
While it’s not uncommon for FEMA to pull one or two teams off a field assignment for security reasons, the two workers who were part of the early November assessments said they’d never had their entire operation shut down before.
“I have left an area before; my team we identified a slight concern and we left,” one FEMA employee in the region said. “But I have never seen every team called back.”
