The Trump Administration Is Diverting Relief Money and Using It to Fund ICE and the Border Wall

President Donald Trump has never backed away from his No. 1 aim at stopping illegal immigration. He doesn’t want undocumented immigrants living the United States, and he doesn’t want them entering. Despite the president’s promise that Mexico would be paying for the wall and that American citizens will always be his top priority, both of those claims are failing under his administration.

This week, two developments reveal that the U.S. budget that was aimed to go toward relief is actually going elsewhere. On Sept. 11, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) released documents that showed millions of dollars that are supposed to be used by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is actually going toward funding the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to CNN, “the transfer from FEMA to ICE is less than 1 percent of FEMA’s overall budget. FEMA’s budget originally was $1.03 billion, and the amount transferred was about $9.755 million.”

While 1 percent may not sound like all that much, it is considerable when understanding that hurricane season has literally just begun, and also the U.S. disastrous handling of the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. Almost 3,000 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria.

“Without the transfers and reprogramming identified in this notification, ICE will not be able to fulfill its adult detention requirements in (fiscal year) 2018,” the document reads, according to CNN. That means that if that 1 percent of money wasn’t allotted for, ICE wouldn’t be able to properly detain all the people they need to make their quota.

Furthermore, money that is intended to provide foreign assistance is now being used to pay for the border wall and also to pay for deportations. “$20 million that Congress allocated for foreign assistance, and use it to pay Mexico for plane and bus fare to deport as many as 17,000 people in the country illegally,” The Daily Intelligencer reports.

The New York Times also reported that “Hundreds of millions of dollars meant to help stabilize Syria and support Palestinian schools and hospitals has already been redirected.”

Trump still wants a lot more money and is asking Congress to fork over billions. The wall is supposedly going to cost $70 billion dollars. We’re just wondering where else the Trump Administration is going to steal from to make this happen.