In the wake of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene, and with Hurricane Milton expected to strike Florida by the end of Wednesday, the federal government is taking flak for its lackluster response to the disasters. Reports have suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), run by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, is not only failing to help Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene but is actually stopping other Americans from trying to help.

A U.S. Coast Guard veteran who now runs a K9 training facility in South Carolina traveled to Boone, North Carolina, to help with recovery efforts, planning to use her dogs to locate and recover missing persons and bodies. In a video posted to social media, she reported, “Here’s the situation: FEMA is in the area and we’ve been told that if we see any FEMA agents, like, high-tail it and go.” She continued, “We’ve been told to just turn around and go the opposite direction, because what they’re doing is they’re just confiscating everything. They would confiscate my gear, my car, my dogs, literally everything.”

The Coast Guard veteran went on to say that rescue and recovery volunteers have “been tracking” FEMA agents who confiscate supplies and donations. “Essentially what they’re doing is they’re taking these supplies to sanctuary areas for illegal migrants and giving it all to them,” she explained. “They are telling the locals here that they have no more money, that they can’t give them money, they can’t do anything, but they are confiscating volunteer supplies as they come through and they are giving it to people who are not legal within the country.”

The Coast Guard veteran recounted that during her 11 years of service, she was stationed in Puerto Rico when both Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Irma hit in 2017. “FEMA did the same stuff there, to the point where the Coast Guard, we did not work directly with FEMA because they were doing shady stuff,” she said. “They were confiscating supplies, they weren’t issuing supplies, they mishandled money, they mishandled distribution of supplies, and the locals suffered for it. And they’re doing the same thing in North Carolina,” she continued. She added, “This is not a ‘conspiracy theory,’ this is not ‘false information.’ Like I’m here, I’m boots on the ground.” She summarized, “FEMA is here and they’re doing really sketchy, shady stuff.”

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, reported that his company is trying to provide Starlink internet and communications terminals to hurricane survivors in North Carolina but “FEMA is both failing to help AND won’t let others help. This is unconscionable!!” He shared a video of SpaceX employees flying over the impacted area in a helicopter and said that FEMA “wouldn’t let them land to deliver critical supplies … my blood is boiling …”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), whose state was struck by Helene first, noted that the federal government’s response to the disaster has been so poor that he authorized Florida’s National Guard and Department of Transportation to travel to North Carolina and conduct search and rescue operations, rebuild roads and bridges, and assist with recovery efforts. “We learned in Florida long ago, we don’t rely on FEMA to do any of that type of activity,” DeSantis said. He continued, “We rely on FEMA to basically be a bank account. … We take matters into our own hands for the preparation and the rescue and response.”

The Washington Stand spoke to Hannah Rariden, a North Carolina resident whose town was hit by the hurricane. Rariden said that she and her family “didn’t see” FEMA during at least the first four days after Hurricane Helene struck. She said that it was up to “our neighbors and fellow North Carolinians [to] take matters into their own hands and clear roads.” When FEMA did finally show up, she explained, they offered the Raridens a one-night stay in a hotel room. “That wasn’t super helpful for my family, so we are staying with friends,” Rariden told TWS. “All we had for days was our immediate neighbors and neighborhood to rely on,” she stated.

Rariden shared that her town was without power for 10 days. She said that she and her family “watched helicopters fly overhead, back and forth, all day, to Swannanoa and back. We learned later that they were rescuing those they could as well as pulling bodies out of trees and mud. It was hard watching those helicopters, knowing that they were finding people of our community dead.” She continued, “We couldn’t see who the helicopters were with, just that it was happening. I know there were a lot of private pilots doing rescue efforts, who we are grateful for.”

Rariden added, “A private helicopter had to drop supplies off to Maggie Valley, where our next door neighbor’s parents are, because there is no road access now. They needed water and food desperately. My neighbors found a private pilot and were able to get them supplies.”

TWS previously reported that Americans who were using their own helicopters and trucks to conduct search and rescue missions in North Carolina and other impacted states have been halted by FEMA and even threatened with arrest. Supplies being donated for hurricane victims have been confiscated by FEMA and diverted away from rural communities and unincorporated areas. In other instances, donations have been rejected by FEMA. A supply company tried to “donate pipe for repairs, to expedite city/county water being restored” but was turned down by federal officials.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) responded to FEMA’s poor disaster management saying, “This isn’t just poor management from FEMA[.] It’s tyranny[.] The feds take money from Americans [u]sing government’s coercive force[,] [t]hen they use it *not* to help Americans [b]ut to facilitate an invasion by illegal aliens [a]nd harass those trying to help hurricane victims.”

FEMA has been accused of using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal immigrants, leaving precious few resources behind for Americans in need. Mayorkas even admitted last week that FEMA does not have enough funding to address the destruction caused by the hurricane. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said Wednesday. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season,” he added. Yet FEMA has spent $1.4 billion since 2022 on housing, feeding, and even transporting illegal immigrants “encountered by the Department of Homeland Security.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) spoke on the subject on Saturday’s live edition of “This Week on the Hill.” He said that while Democrats and their allies may argue that FEMA only used certain designated funds for illegal immigrants, “the point is that this administration has the wrong priorities. They have prioritized everybody around the world by opening the border wide and subjecting us to catastrophe upon catastrophe, meaning the humanitarian catastrophes that are involved in this.”

He continued, “But the failures and the subversive activity is highlighted in a moment like this, when the American people need the full attention of the Biden administration. But they don’t have it because their focus is in the wrong places.” Johnson added, “I think people understand this and I think that’s why we are going to have a very successful election in about 30 days from now. People have had enough of this and they want sanity restored.”

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris has received continued criticism for her failure to address the suffering of hurricane survivors. On Tuesday of last week, while Americans in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee were facing mass flooding, Harris recorded an interview on “Call Her Daddy,” a sex podcast known for its vulgar and explicit language. The Make America Great Again PAC posted a video showing clips from Harris’s interview interspersed with video footage of the damage being done by the hurricane, including houses being swept away, streets being flooded, and Americans looking for missing family members. The video ended with the words “She doesn’t care.”

Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump and the founder of America First Legal, commented, “In a moment of crisis, as North Carolina citizens climbed to higher ground to avoid the floodwaters, Kamala let them drown. She did not call in choppers to rescue them. She went to a ritzy fundraiser. She recorded a podcast known for its X-rated content. She abandoned them.”

According to The Washington Free Beacon, Mayorkas spent his weekend shopping at luxury men’s clothing retailer Sid Mashburn, while his leadership of FEMA was being broadly criticized and Americans were still struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Helene.