They’re Building Camps, Not Levees

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created to help Americans survive disasters. But under the Trump administration, it is being retooled into something else entirely: a mechanism for mass detention and deportation.

$608 million in FEMA funds is now being redirected to help states build and expand migrant detention facilities. This includes a possible reimbursement for Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz,” a swamp-based complex accused of inhumane conditions and limited legal access. The administration has also awarded a $1.26 billion contract for a sprawling tent city in Texas, creating the largest detention center in U.S. history. At the same time, FEMA has cut off funding for disaster prevention programs and hazard mitigation, even as floods and tornadoes wreak havoc across the country while hurricane season is just getting started. The agency, once meant to protect the public from catastrophes, is now being enlisted to fulfill an ideological campaign.

History is replete with disasters that occur when governments redirect their priorities away from protecting the people and toward punishing perceived internal enemies. In the 1930s, Stalin’s Soviet Union redirected resources into rooting out “traitors” within the Communist Party, even as the nation faced famine and looming war, severely impacting their response to Germany’s invasion. Mao’s China tore apart its own educational, medical, and agricultural systems during the Cultural Revolution, all in the name of ideological purity. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia displaced and murdered millions in a deadly pursuit of agrarian utopia. In the U.S., McCarthy-era witch hunts left lives ruined and institutions hollowed out as loyalty to the state was measured by political conformity, abandoning citizens in pursuit of ideological purity.

What links these moments isn’t just cruelty; it’s a disturbing sign of a government turning inward, identifying its citizens as an enemy. It’s a shift from building to breaking, from serving its people to hunting them. In addition to the FEMA funds, ICE was recently endowed with a $45 billion budget to build “detention centers.” One has to wonder what will happen when we run out of migrants to detain. If history is any guide, we shouldn’t be too surprised if these “detention centers” are repurposed as “political re-education camps.”

When FEMA is drained of its ability to respond to fires, floods, and hurricanes so it can fund detention centers and fulfill the dreams of an authoritarian agenda, we’re not just watching a bureaucratic reshuffle; we’re witnessing a dangerous pivot. A government that no longer safeguards its citizens, but instead seeks enemies among them, is a government in rapid decline.

And that decline always begins with the same instinct: to punish, not protect.

We’re out of time, folks. History is watching. It is our duty to resist. Stand up now or bow down later.

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