ICYMI: Trump's Former FEMA Administrator Says Reports of Diversion Of Disaster Staff To Immigration Enforcement "Raises Serious Questions"

Washington Post: House investigation finds DHS pulled FEMA personnel into ICE hiring and detention operations while the agency lost nearly a third of its workforce

WASHINGTON — The Washington Post reported Friday that a new House investigation found the Department of Homeland Security misused FEMA by reassigning dozens of its employees to immigration enforcement work, degrading the agency's ability to prepare for and respond to disasters. Pete Gaynor, who led FEMA during President Trump's first term, told the Post the findings "raise serious questions that deserve honest answers."

"This is the result when the nation's disaster agency answers to a department with other priorities. Every emergency manager in this country, Republican or Democrat, knows the fix: get FEMA out of DHS and make it an independent, cabinet-level agency that reports directly to the President. Congress has the power to do it and no excuse left not to," said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council member Ashley Shelton.

The report, from Democrats on the House Transportation subcommittee that oversees emergency management, draws on interviews with 15 current and former FEMA employees and policy experts and, along with along with GAO documents and interviews reviewed by the Post, finds:

Beginning in August 2025, DHS reassigned roughly 125 FEMA employees from its security and human resources offices to immigration work, with 41 more volunteering for border assignments earlier that year. FEMA personnel worked inside detention facilities, screened and issued job offers for new ICE enforcement hires, and helped manage a Defense Department civilian volunteer force whose duties included planning support for raids, arrests, and the movement of detainees from arrest through deportation.

A former FEMA official who specialized in national incident management told investigators that ICE could not have executed its enforcement surge without FEMA building the operational structure behind it.

The immigration workload consumed FEMA's hiring and administrative capacity at the same time disaster staffers were losing their contracts. DHS in some cases dangled contract renewals in front of disaster-specific staff, known as CORE employees, who agreed to take immigration assignments. Those same on-call response and recovery workers had been fired en masse last winter, then brought back months later once new FEMA leadership arrived.

As long as FEMA sits inside DHS, its staff, its funding, and its focus can be redirected to whatever the department's enforcement agenda demands, and this report documents exactly how that happens. Sabotaging Our Safety has been calling on Congress to restore FEMA as an independent, Cabinet-level agency with a direct line to the President, so the next time disaster strikes, the people trained to respond are actually at their posts.

Read the full Washington Post story here.