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Playing Politics and Costing Lives

The Texas legislature is now meeting in a special session, in part, to scramble to fix a broken disaster assistance and flood prevention system after decades of turning a blind eye. The catastrophic flooding in Kerrville, Texas that killed hundreds, including at least 27 children and counselors attending a summer camp, is the kind of tragedy that demands accountability. The timeline of events that has emerged has made clear that local, state, and federal warning systems meant for natural disaster scenarios were, at best, woefully inadequate, and, at worst, complete failures. The state of Texas, having failed to pass flood mitigation and disaster assistance during its regular legislative session, added those issues to the special legislative session that began today. At the federal level, DHS showed wild incompetence, delaying search and rescue efforts by 72 hours due to bureaucratic nonsense, and the department cut off money to respond to emergency calls from desperate residents. Further, DOGE had fired key officials at FEMA who were there to prevent this exact scenario. Meanwhile, state and local leaders ignored the dire need for more flood protection for a decade in order to play politics, diverting money away from disaster assistance while spending extraordinary amounts on the targeting and prosecution of immigrants. The people of Kerrville deserved better.

We can’t ignore that while DHS is gutting vital disaster assistance at FEMA, they are literally breaking the bank to pay for a campaign of terror against immigrants. A day before the flood, DHS opened a $750 million concentration camp for hundreds of immigrants in central Florida with horrific conditions. Trump’s DHS cares more about torturing immigrants than providing vital disaster aid. In order to save money to build their torture chambers, the administration seems more than willing to sacrifice lives and the safety of the public.

Trump Has Kneecapped America’s Emergency Response System to Fund His War on Immigrants
  • DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts included firing several key FEMA officials charged with coordinating and ensuring proper local response to emergencies. Their positions were not filled at the time of the floods, hampering efforts to save lives.
  • Further cost cutting meant FEMA couldn’t perform even basic emergency management functions in the aftermath of the Kerrville floods. The agency also failed to approve search and rescue efforts for three whole days f0llowing the Kerrville floods, a delay that continues to hamper recovery efforts.
  • While all of this was happening, FEMA proudly opened a concentration camp of outdoor cages and tents in the middle of the Everglades. This concentration camp cost taxpayers $750 million.
  • Holding hundreds of immigrants without criminal records in deplorable conditions at FEMA’s new concentration camp will do nothing to improve public safety and will endanger the lives of all persons held or working there.
  • Further, Congress just increased ICE’s budget to $150 billion, which is larger than the military budgets of all but fifteen countries on the planet. The budget for trafficking and internment of immigrants will only continue to eat into agencies like FEMA that are essential to the safety of Americans.
  • We should not saddle future generations with debt to finance a terror campaign against immigrants. Constructing concentration camps should not be prioritized over saving Americans from natural disasters.
State and Local Governments Have Also Prioritized the Politics of Targeting Immigrants Over Public Safety
  • The state of Texas and other local government officials have compounded the failures of the Trump administration by continuously shortchanging funding for disaster relief while writing a blank check for the targeting and arrest of immigrants.
  • Despite requests for funding from local officials since at least 2015, the Texas legislature has refused to provide even one million dollars to install a flood warning system in Kerrville.
  • Texas has spent nearly $11 billion on Operation Lonestar, an unconstitutional state law targeting immigrants for arrest, jail, and deportation, since 2021. Texas officials should have used these funds to prepare Texans for natural disasters like the Kerrville floods.
  • Texas also spent over $3 billion on an attempt at constructing a border wall before quietly defunding the project, which was only 8% complete. These funds could have been dedicated to emergency response or disaster preparedness.
  • Kerr County officials chose to spend millions in federal ARPA funds on equipment for police and firefighters rather than a flood warning system. Throwing money at police does not make us safer.
  • The state of Texas, like the Trump administration, has willfully failed in its duty to keep its residents safe. Until governments at all levels realize that police cannot guarantee the safety of the public, preventable and tragic disasters will continue to happen.
Fighting Back
  • Elected officials must fight the Trump administration’s decimation of natural disaster preparedness funding at every turn. Public safety means more than police, and law enforcement cannot save us from the increasingly frequent natural disasters.
  • Elected officials can no longer be allowed to spend tax dollars on the targeting of immigrants while insisting on massive cuts to basic services that represent a small fraction of the budget.

Resources

  • Following the Kerrville floods, twenty states sued the Trump administration for its cancellation of a long-running grant program that helped communities prepare for natural disasters.
  • Donate to support victims of the Kerrville floods here.
  • Additionally, CBS News compiled this list of local relief organizations that are part of the recovery efforts in Central Texas and accepting donations.
  • National Weather Service Flood Safety Tips and Resource