How a 1987 Law to Help Homeless Americans Now Funds Bus Tickets for Illegal Aliens

In March 1983, President Reagan signed into law the "Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Act", in response to a then-ongoing recession. It directed the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to establish a national board that would funnel $50 million through local boards to private voluntary organizations providing "emergency food and shelter to needy individuals". That was transmogrified in a 1987 homelessness bill into the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSB).

The national ESFP board is chaired by the FEMA director and includes representatives from six private nonprofit organizations

• The national board sets the policies, procedures, and guidelines for the program, and then disburse the money into smaller grants.
• Among other duties, those local boards advertise available funding, set priorities for that funding, assess local community needs, and select grant recipients in local recipient organizations (LROs).

2019 Emergency Supplemental

• Due to a lack of DHS resources to send them elsewhere, many languished in Border Patrol facilities, which were never meant for long-term housing, or intended for anyone other than single adult males.
• Trump sent a supplemental request for additional border funding to the Democratic-run Congress, which sat on it for almost two months.

Continuing Appropriations, and a New Migrant EFSP

• Trump did not request any EFSP funding in FY 2020, and in his FY 2021 budget request he asked that the program be eliminated as it is "duplicative of Federal housing programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and because emergency food and shelter programs are primarily State and local governments' responsibility."
• Despite this, EFSP received $125 million in funding for FY 2020 and $130 million in FY 2021.
• In the FY 2022 appropriations bill signed on March 15, those proportions shifted to $130mm in appropriations for regular EFSP and $150mm for migrant EFSP, with an additional $150mil for what the bill terms "providing shelter and other services to families and individuals encountered by DHS".
• The White House wants to bump up funding for the migrant version to $154mil in FY 2023.

The FY 2023 budget request explains that those costs include "both local and long distance" transportation

• so if you are wondering how migrants can make it from the border to new lives in Los Angeles, New York City, and Portland, Maine, now you know
• And, what's more, it looks like you're expected to pay for it

https://cis.org/Arthur/How-1987-Law-Help-Homeless-Americans-Now-Funds-Bus-Tickets-Illegal-Aliens