A brand new $608 million grant program from the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) will give states cash to construct detention facilities for individuals suspected of being in america unlawfully.
FEMA was already slated to cowl among the prices for Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” utilizing a Biden-era program meant for serving to asylum seekers. The brand new facility, shortly constructed in a distant a part of the Florida Everglades, is predicted to run a tab of about $450 million a 12 months.
The brand new FEMA grant program comes because the Trump administration has more and more slashed FEMA’s potential to help catastrophe response, and because the president has mulled closing the company altogether. CNN reported Friday that FEMA has proposed slicing almost $1 billion in grant funding to assist native first responders higher put together for disasters and to assist bolster cybersecurity.
A webpage for this system additionally mentioned it will assist scale back “overcrowding” in amenities maintained by Customs and Border Patrol.
A Human Rights Watch report launched this week charged that three amenities run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida confronted “excessive overcrowding,” and that many detainees have been denied entry to medical care.
FEMA has come below scrutiny within the wake of lethal flash floods in Texas, together with stories that the federal response was hamstrung by finances cuts or controls designed to restrict giant expenditures.
Functions for this system are open by August 8. It’s not clear if states past Florida are but planning make pushes to construct their very own detention facilities.
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