Whistleblowers have come forward with allegations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency mismanaged funds and left first responders waiting in hotels for deployment orders to assist Americans in North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene.

The whistleblowers made the allegations to Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), who wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Friday asking for more details about FEMA’s allocation of funds.

“My office has been in contact with whistleblowers in numerous emergency-management functions at the federal, state, and local levels, and they all point to the same critical mismanagement issues,” Gaetz’s letter reads.

“FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated funds, and left other federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground. As reported and further confirmed by my office, hundreds, if not thousands of service members were deployed by the Department of Defense to North Carolina and have sat idle, waiting for FEMA. We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in hotels. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency,” the letter adds.

Gaetz asked Mayorkas a series of questions about whether FEMA is spending disaster relief money on illegal migrants and the portion of its overall budget going towards non-citizens. He is requesting that Mayorkas respond by October 11.

FEMA has faced scrutiny for its response to the...

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