Climate disasters are becoming more frequent, destructive, and costly, yet federal disaster response systems remain under-resourced relative to the scale of the challenge. To make matters worse, the Trump administration is rapidly expanding the coercive capacity of the state as seen through the explosion in staffing and capacity at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Headlines about ICE brutality and brazenness—and murder—have become commonplace since Trump took office. At the same time, the public institutions responsible for keeping communities safe face cuts and capacity constraints.

Instead, the federal government can and should use the budget reconciliation process to reduce the ICE budget and redirect those resources to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to fund disaster response. Redirecting federal dollars from ICE terror to disaster response would provide immediate relief by getting ICE agents off the streets while also directing resources to communities harmed by increasingly frequent and costly climate disasters, shifting federal investment toward public institutions that deliver real safety and security.

Extreme heat, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and severe storms are disrupting lives, damaging homes and infrastructure, and increasing costs for communities already facing a broader affordability crisis. The number of billion-dollar disasters increased by 154 percent between 2003 and 2022 compared to the previous 20-year period, while associated costs rose by more than 250 percent.¹ The past three years ranked as the top years on record for billion-dollar disasters.² Climate-fueled disasters now impose close to $1 trillion—equivalent to roughly $7,000 per household—while rising insurance, energy, and housing costs leave many communities with fewer resources to prepare for and recover from these shocks.³ In 2024, more than one in five adults in the United States reported experiencing economic hardship from disasters or severe weather events.⁴ These costs are not borne equally: existing inequalities and decades of disinvestment from the state push some communities into more hazard-prone areas, resulting in disproportionate impacts and more difficult recoveries.⁵

Since retaking office in 2025, the Trump administration has undermined FEMA’s capacity to respond to disasters by politicizing aid, cutting its workforce, and diverting resources toward immigration enforcement and detention operations.⁶ In his second term, Trump has approved 80 percent of disaster requests from Republican governors but only about 60 percent from Democratic governors, with delays to deploy aid stretching weeks or months.⁷ Despite FEMA’s longstanding staffing shortages—exacerbated by a nearly 20 percent reduction in staff since January 2025—the administration has also redirected FEMA personnel to support immigration enforcement.⁸ In 2025, more than 100 FEMA employees were detailed to ICE to support the agency’s hiring surge.⁹ These reassignments diverted FEMA personnel and administrative capacity toward immigration enforcement even as the agency was losing thousands of employees and facing growing demands for disaster response. When Texas’s Guadalupe River flooded in July 2025, for example, only 15 percent of FEMA’s incident-management workforce was available to deploy.¹⁰ Survivors faced long wait times and unanswered calls when seeking assistance from FEMA, with as many as 84 percent of calls going unanswered in the days after the floods.¹¹ Fewer trained staff can lead to delays, reduced access to services, and other adverse—and often inequitable—outcomes for disaster survivors.¹²

Funding for ICE has skyrocketed under the second Trump administration, and it has now become the highest-funded US law enforcement agency.¹³ A decade ago, ICE operated on an annual budget of less than $6 billion; under the second Trump administration, Congress provided the agency with an unprecedented $75 billion through the 2025 reconciliation law alone, including $45 billion for detention capacity and $30 billion for recruitment and hiring.¹⁴

This influx of cash has intensified ICE’s history of human rights violations and violent tactics—including raids, racial profiling, warrantless searches, mass detention and deportation, outright murder, and the destruction of families and communities.¹⁵ ICE agents have targeted people with violent and reckless tactics at home, in the streets, at workplaces, and in schools, hospitals, and places of worship. With little to no oversight and the administration granting “absolute immunity” from accountability, federal immigration agents under Trump have fatally shot at least seven people, including two US citizens.¹⁶ ICE arrests have reached record levels: the agency arrested nearly 50,000 people in July 2026 alone.¹⁷ More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office amid reports of substandard medical care, abuse, neglect, and dangerous detention conditions.¹⁸ Immigrant detention has reached record highs, with makeshift facilities used to rapidly expand capacity toward 100,000 beds or more this year.¹⁹ The aggressive expansion of ICE has fueled growing public opposition to the agency. A majority of Americans believe ICE is making the country less safe, while about half believe the agency is beyond reform and support abolishing ICE.²⁰

ICE now has more money than it knows what to do with, and much of that money has not been spent. Congress can use budget reconciliation to rescind remaining unobligated ICE supplemental funding passed through 2025 and 2026 reconciliation laws. As of June 2026, roughly $100 billion in ICE funding provided through budget reconciliation had not yet been used.²¹ Congress can then appropriate the rescinded funds to establish a new federal funding stream for disaster relief within the Stafford Act’s existing disaster-declaration and assistance machinery. Rather than moving funds into FEMA’s existing Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), Congress should appropriate the equivalent to the FEMA Administrator to remain available until expended for defined categories of disaster assistance following qualifying Stafford Act disaster declarations. This approach would allow Congress to immediately redirect federal resources toward disaster relief and resilience while working within existing federal programs and authorities.

Cutting funding to ICE would shift federal investment away from an expanding enforcement apparatus toward public services that provide tangible security to working people. For decades, federal investment in war, immigration enforcement, and other militarized security functions has expanded the coercive capacity of the state, while public systems that provide real security to working people have remained under-resourced. Redirecting state capacity toward disaster response would strengthen the public institutions people rely on to protect their homes, livelihoods, and communities, demonstrating that safety can be built through public capacity and preparedness rather than coercive enforcement. When disaster assistance is unavailable or delayed, households are forced to shoulder more of the costs of recovery themselves, including uncovered losses, housing and financial instability, while communities with fewer resources face greater barriers to securing aid. By directing resources toward disaster response, Congress can build the state capacity to deliver tangible benefits and demonstrate that public institutions can be a source of security in people’s everyday lives.

Over the longer term, this divest-invest approach helps transform and reorient state capacity toward the institutions needed to build a decarbonized economy. The climate crisis requires a government capable of coordinating large-scale investments, reducing collective risk, responding rapidly to disruptions, and protecting communities from escalating threats. That means moving beyond FEMA’s historically reactive model toward a public disaster system centered on prevention, preparedness, community capacity, and equitable recovery.²² As part of this transformation, FEMA should be restructured as an independent agency outside of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with the resources and authority to lead a comprehensive federal approach to climate resilience. Strengthening FEMA’s workforce through adequate staffing, training, and institutional knowledge—and investing in community-based planning and preparedness—can help build the high-trust, low-barrier systems people need before, during, and after disasters. It can also reduce reliance on privatized disaster response systems that often produce uneven and inequitable recovery outcomes.

Moving money from ICE to FEMA is, therefore, a step toward a broader restructuring of the state: shifting resources and institutional power away from coercive enforcement and toward the public capacity needed to address the interconnected crises of climate change, displacement, and economic insecurity. That transformation should include abolishing ICE and dismantling DHS’s militarized immigration enforcement apparatus, including the border patrol which has also expanded under Trump. A just disaster policy should not simply restore communities to the conditions that existed before a disaster—it should reduce the vulnerabilities that made them unsafe in the first place. That means investing in resilient housing and infrastructure, public and community-controlled services, local high-road jobs, renewable energy, and long-term risk reduction.²³ Divesting from militarized and coercive enforcement can free resources for these investments and help build a state with the scale, urgency, and capacity for collective safety—one that prevents harm, builds resilience, and meets people’s needs.