Hurricane Helene caused mass destruction across the southeastern United States, leaving thousands needing aid and at least 227 people dead. Now, former President Donald Trump is using the disaster as a political cudgel, falsely claiming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is out of money because it diverted funds to “illegal immigrants.” 

“The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money [for hurricane relief]. ... They spent it all on illegal migrants,” Trump said Thursday during a rally in Michigan. “They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank."

Trump’s claim is false. FEMA is not out of money, and no money was diverted to undocumented immigrants.

FEMA, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says it has enough funds for recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene. On Wednesday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “We have the immediate needs right now.” Mayorkas said he was concerned there may not be enough funds for the rest of hurricane season, with another hurricane expected to hit later this week.

But any shortfall would be driven by the increase in extreme weather events — not disaster relief funds being diverted to undocumented immigrants. FEMA has a separate program, the Shelter and Services Program, which gives funds to local governments and nonprofits to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. In 2024, Congress allocated $650 million to the program. The administration has a legal obligation to spend funds for their Congressionally-authorized purpose.

During his presidency, Trump diverted disaster relief money to provide services for undocumented immigrants. In 2019, the Trump administration informed Congress that it was taking “$155 million from the disaster fund” for “immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers,” the Washington Post reported. 

Trump’s lies about FEMA, which are ongoing, have also been amplified by other Republican allies, including Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX), and Elon Musk. 

This is not just another lie. Spreading misinformation about FEMA’s capabilities hampers relief efforts. On Friday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said at a press conference that misinformation can lead to people who need help not registering for aid. “This level of misinformation creates the scenario where they won’t even come to us,” Criswell said. 

Trump has always exploited undocumented immigrants for political advantage. But falsely blaming migrants for nearly every problem — real and imagined — is the core issue of the Trump 2024 campaign. 

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for a "crime wave"

Trump's false claim that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a crime wave is a staple of his stump speech. On August 22, Trump claimed that the Biden-Harris administration “unleashed a deadly plague of migrant crime on our country by not doing their job.” At the Turning Point Action Conference in July, Trump told the crowd, “We have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime.” 

There is no violent crime wave. Violent crime has declined or remained flat each year of the Biden administration. According to the FBI’s 2023 crime report, violent crime decreased three percent last year, and there was a significant decline in murder (-11.3%). 

Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and crime statistics expert, told Popular Information he has not seen “any evidence” of undocumented immigrants fueling increases in crime. Asher previously looked at “violent crime across the 14 counties along the Texas border with Mexico” and found a “relatively steady violent crime rate below that of the rest of their state and the nation as a whole.” Furthermore, research shows that immigration is linked to decreases in violent crime, and neighborhoods with higher concentrations of immigrant populations have lower crime rates. 

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for voter fraud 

Trump has also falsely claimed that the Biden administration is allowing undocumented immigrants to enter the country so that they can illegally vote and steal the 2024 election. Last week, Trump argued that the Biden-Harris administration “stole the FEMA money” so that they could give it to undocumented immigrants as a political strategy because they want them to “vote for them.”

During the presidential debate against Vice President Harris in September, Trump claimed that “a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.” Trump stated, “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them into our country.” This claim has been repeated by Trump and his allies for months. It is also rooted in a white nationalist conspiracy theory called the great replacement theory. 

But the reality is that it is illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote in U.S. elections. Further, data shows it almost never happens. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, maintains a database of voter fraud that found “fewer than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than 1 billion lawfully cast ballots.” 

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for driving up housing costs 

During the vice presidential debate last week, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) claimed that housing is “totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.” Vance also argued that undocumented immigrants are “one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country.” 

This is not true. Economists and housing experts told the Washington Post that many other factors are more significant than undocumented immigrants when it comes to increases in housing prices. Additionally, many immigrants come into the country with “few financial resources,” and are therefore “far less likely to be able to buy a home.” While there is evidence that an increase in immigrants may slightly increase rent rates, just as any population increase, a study shows that the increase is minimal. 

The Trump campaign plans to conduct a “mass deportation” of undocumented immigrants to lower housing costs. But, according to economists, this plan would likely increase housing costs instead of lowering them. A report by Mother Jones notes that Trump’s deportation plans may “grind the construction of new housing to a halt,” since 1.4 million undocumented workers work in construction, making up “more than 10 percent of the entire labor force, and 32 percent of roofers.” 

The Trump campaign claims undocumented immigrants will bankrupt Medicare and Social Security

At nearly every campaign stop, Trump claims that undocumented immigrants will drain resources from Medicare and Social Security.

At a Pennsylvania rally on August 17, Trump said “[Harris is] going to destroy your Medicare. She's going to destroy your Social Security. First, she has thrown open our borders. Second, she is flooding our country with millions and millions of low-wage migrants and giving them welfare, free health care, food stamps, public benefits…. She wants to make them citizens, dumping them onto Medicare and dumping them into your beautiful Social Security program.”

The GOP has also included this claim in its official 2024 platform, which reads, “Republicans will protect Medicare's finances from being financially crushed by the Democrat plan to add tens of millions of new illegal immigrants to the rolls of Medicare. We vow to strengthen Medicare for future generations.”

Studies show, however, that immigrants boost Medicare and Social Security by contributing more tax dollars than they receive in benefits from the two programs.

A 2013 study, for example, found that in 2009, immigrants made 14.7 percent of all contributions to Medicare that year while only accounting for 7.9 percent of the program’s expenditures, resulting in a surplus of nearly $14 billion. That same year, people born in the US generated a deficit of $30.9 billion. (Undocumented immigrants are not able to enroll in Medicare.)  

Immigrants have a similar effect on the Social Security budget because they increase the ratio of workers paying into the system to retirees benefiting from it. (Undocumented immigrants cannot recieve social security benefits.)

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for taking jobs from American citizens

Another popular Trump refrain is that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs from American citizens. In a September speech to the Economic Club of New York, he claimed that “100% of the jobs created under [Biden’s] administration have gone to illegal migrants that came into our country.” 

According to reporting by Forbes, this is false. Since Biden took office, the number of U.S.-born people in the workforce has increased by 6%, and the number of foreign-born workers has increased by 22%. Under Trump, both workforce populations decreased, by 1.4%and 1.6%respectively.

As Popular Information has previously reported, undocumented immigrants in the US workforce mean more jobs for American citizens. If Trump is elected and carries out his plan for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens can expect their job opportunities to shrink. One study on the economic impacts of deportation found that for every 1 million immigrants deported between 2008 and 2014, 88,000 American workers lost jobs. Without undocumented immigrants, the American economy’s current labor shortage would be even worse.

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for smuggling Fentanyl

At a July rally, Trump claimed “We’re losing 300,000 people a year to fentanyl that comes through our border.” Vance parrotted this claim at the vice presidential debate last week, saying, “Kamala Harris let in fentanyl into our communities at record levels.”

However, it is largely American citizens who are responsible for bringing fentanyl into the country. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 86.2 percent of fentanyl trafficking offenders in 2021 were U.S. citizens. 

Trump’s claim that fentanyl is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans a year is also exaggerated. The total number of annual drug overdoses is between 100,000 and 110,000, while the number of opioid overdoses (which includes, but is not limited to, fentanyl deaths) is about 81,000. 

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for inflation

Undocumented immigrants are also responsible for inflation, according to Trump. In July, he told supporters at a Michigan rally that “another key driver of inflation is the migrant invasion Kamala Harris has created on our southern border.”

A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that if Trump succeeded in deporting 7.5 million workers over a two-year period, inflation would be 7.4 percent higher than if the mass deportation plan was not enacted because the deportation would worsen existing labor shortages and decrease production. If Trump deported 1.3 million workers, inflation would be 1.3 percent higher.