The Lincoln County Administrator plans to reject Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds rather than work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after the Trump Administration tied the funds to cooperation with federal authorities.
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“I’ve never had an experience where our emergency management agency was now going to be required to be part of the immigration enforcement arm of the federal government,” Lincoln County Administrator Carrie Kipfer reportedly said at an August 5 meeting.
“We do homeland security grants for community resiliency, to prepare for disaster and to be able to recover from disaster, not to worry about immigration law,” she added.
Under President Donald Trump’s new rules, recipients of FEMA emergency preparedness funds would be required to cooperate with federal authorities by honoring requests to participate in joint law enforcement activities with Homeland Security agencies.
Recipients must also agree to share information with federal law enforcement and comply with ICE detention requests.
According to Kipfer, the new grant terms would violate county policies.
Kipfer reportedly discovered the new grant terms when reading through the contract, and claimed that the changes were not communicated to her before receiving the grant application, which she had under a week to review due to the narrow application window.
Lincoln County has previously taken advantage of the federal grant to fund emergency preparation projects without draining the county budget. According to a report from the Lincoln County News, the county was planning to apply for $135,000 worth of grants before Kipfer realized the funds would require the county to cooperate with federal law enforcement.
Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency Director Emily Huber reportedly told the outlet that she would have used the money to replace emergency generators meant to power communications systems in case of severe weather, and to purchase equipment to analyze the contents of illegal drugs seized by law enforcement.
Lincoln County residents will have to go without those upgrades because their county authorities are unwilling to cooperate with immigration authorities.
“We’re not in the business of doing immigration, and now they’re mixing the two without giving us a heads-up … I am concerned about things that we can’t purchase now and how we’re going to meet that need in the future, especially if these grants are going to go away,” said County Commissioner David Levesque.
According to Kipfer, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office has signaled that they would be willing to take legal action against the Trump Administration to remove the new grant conditions.
[RELATED: AG Frey Sues Trump Administration over Library and Museum Funding Cuts…]
Frey has not yet announced any such lawsuit, but, since President Trump took office in late January, his office has demonstrated extreme eagerness to sue to undermine any and all aspects of the president’s agenda, from an end to birthright citizenship to cuts to library funding.
