By Ted Hesson and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration is transferring Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers to help speed the hiring of thousands of immigration enforcement agents, according to staff notices seen by Reuters and a government spokesperson, diverting resources away from the agency during the U.S. hurricane season.
The Department of Homeland Security, the parent of both FEMA and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, sent notices to affected employees directing them to accept the transfer to ICE or potentially face termination.
The Washington Post reported that DHS transferred more than 100 people to ICE from its human resources department and security team, citing current and former officials familiar with the reassignments. Reuters was not able to determine the number of affected staff.
The timing of the transfers could leave FEMA understaffed at a critical moment, former FEMA officials warned, potentially hampering disaster response during the height of hurricane season.
“DHS is adopting an all-hands-on-deck strategy to recruit 10,000 new ICE agents,” department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“To support this effort, select FEMA employees will temporarily be detailed to ICE for 90 days to assist with hiring and vetting. Their deployment will NOT disrupt FEMA’s critical operations.”
The transfers come as President Donald Trump seeks to expand immigration enforcement, a cornerstone of his administration’s agenda, while FEMA is facing staffing shortages after thousands of staffers, including a raft of senior officials, resigned, accepted incentives to leave or were fired.
MASS HIRING
Trump aims to deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. A spending package passed by the Republican-led Congress in July provides a massive funding increase for ICE, including money to hire 10,000 new ICE officers over five years.
ICE has been trying to bring back retired personnel and lure officers from other law enforcement agencies.
At the same time, the Trump administration has floated the idea of shrinking or shutting down FEMA entirely.
FEMA employees who received transfer orders were told they needed to accept or decline the reassignment within seven days, according to notices seen by Reuters. If they declined or failed to report for duty they could be fired, the notices said.
FEMA employees have been deployed to other parts of DHS before, including to help with immigration efforts, but it has been on a voluntary basis, according to Deanne Criswell, who headed FEMA during President Joe Biden’s administration.
Citing the wording of the notices, Criswell said she was worried the reassignments were not voluntary and that many affected staff would decline, exacerbating staffing shortage ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season’s peak next month.
FEMA’s human resources and security staff are critical to contracting with and vetting local companies and people to respond to a disaster.
“They’re already short staffed because they’ve lost so many. Are they going to be able to get them back? That would be my concern,” Criswell said.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Nathan Layne; Editing by Ross Colvin and Diane Craft)
