A Timeline of FEMA Funding for Migrants
The latest: Claims that a taxpayer-funded ‘luxury NYC hotel’ has become a gang ‘recruiting center’ and ‘base of operations’
By Andrew R. Arthur on February 12, 2025
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding for migrants who entered the United States illegally has reentered the news cycle, with reports that four employees were sacked over payments to reimburse the city of New York for hotel costs associated with migrant housing. Here’s a brief timeline of how a 40-year-old program for homeless vets morphed into a migrant sustenance fund.
In March 1983, President Reagan signed the “Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Act” (TEFA), in response to a then-ongoing recession. TEFA established the “Emergency Food and Shelter Program” (EFSP) and directed the head of FEMA to establish a national board to funnel $50 million through local boards to private voluntary organizations providing “emergency food and shelter to needy individuals”.
Thereafter, in 1987, Reagan signed the “Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act”, enacted to address “an immediate and unprecedented crisis, due to the lack of shelter for a growing number of individuals, and families, including elderly persons, handicapped persons, families with children, Native Americans, and veterans”. That bill authorized the EFSP.
Decades later, in May 2019, Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border apprehended more than 95,000 adult migrants travelling
https://cis.org/Arthur/Timeline-FEMA-Funding-Migrants
