A prison employee in Florida who voted for President Trump argued that Trump is to blame for the current government shutdown.
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Crystal Minton told The New York Times in an article published Monday. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
{mosads}Minton’s comments came as part of an expansive report from the newspaper on how the government shutdown, as well as a hurricane, have impacted a Florida town.
The Times notes that a federal prison in Marianna, Fla., lost much of its roof as a result of Hurricane Michael, which hit parts of the state last October. The damage caused hundreds of inmates to be relocated to a facility in Yazoo City, Miss.
Corrections officers from Florida have had to commute 400 miles to the site of the prison since then for two-week stints in their jobs. As of this week, the corrections officers are now doing so without being paid.
“You add a hurricane, and it’s just too much,” Mike Vinzant, a 32-year-old guard and the president of the local prison officers’ union, told the newspaper.
A partial government shutdown began on Dec. 22 after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on a new congressional spending bill.
Trump has asked that the bill include $5 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which Democrats oppose.
The shutdown has impacted hundreds of thousands of federal workers around the nation. The Times noted that the federal prison in Marianna employed 300 people.
The newspaper additionally noted that Minton, a secretary, had previously obtained permission to postpone her job responsibilities in Mississippi until February. She is a single mother caring for disabled parents, the Times noted.