Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party last year and became an independent, blasted Democratic Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, her former boss, because the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Shelter Services Program has plans to send roughly twice the amount of funding to New York that it plans to send to Arizona, a border state.
Speaking to first responders in the border city of Yuma, Sinema was asked, “Why is the money going to New York, and who’s sending it?”
“My staff is gonna be really upset but I’m gonna tell you the truth here,” Sinema admitted. “The reason the money is going to New York is because the Speaker of the House (likely a reference to Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader) is from New York and the leader of the United States Senate (Schumer) is from New York. That is how a bunch of money went to New York.”
“The Shelter and Services Program provides funds to non-federal entities that provide sheltering and other eligible services to noncitizen migrants who have been encountered by the Department of Homeland Security and released from custody while awaiting the outcome of their immigration proceedings,” FEMA states. “The intent is to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the safe, orderly, and humane release of noncitizen migrants from short-term holding facilities.”
Arizona will receive a total of roughly $69.3 million; New York will receive a total of roughly $134.6 million, according to The Daily Mail.
“Look, this is something I fought for,” she continued. “When I fought really hard to ensure that this money got included in the omnibus budget in December of last year … we fought really hard to get this in, the money was intended — and there’s language that was put in the law that said that it should be going for decompression of the border. The fact that a yeoman’s amount of this money went to New York City in my opinion is wrong because they are not a border state and they are not facing the kind of pressure that we are facing here.”
“So when I hear from folks in other parts of the country who say, ‘Oh, it’s hard, our shelters are overwhelmed,’ yeah, come live a day in the life of Yuma, Summerton, or San Luis. Just one day,” she declared.
“I am livid that the administration is sending money to a part of the country that while it has a lot of folks showing up in their shelter, they don’t have folks wandering the streets of our small towns and communities or facing heat exhaustion, showing up without basics like formula,” she said.
“People will come across the border with chicken pox. What we’re experiencing here in Arizona is matched only by what folks are experiencing in southern Texas. Those are the two communities that are experiencing this crisis. The rest of the country’s seeing some elements of it, but we are here facing the brunt. And it is wrong and unfair that that SSP money is going to places other than South Texas and South Arizona,” she concluded.