San Juan mayor rips FEMA for ending Puerto Rico aid

by Morgan Gstalter - 01/31/18 11:15 AM ET

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on Tuesday criticized President Trump and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for ending food and water aid to Puerto Rico, saying the island still desperately needs help.

FEMA announced Tuesday that it was ending free supplies of food and water that it began after Hurricane Maria hit the island in September, noting that supermarkets and businesses are reopening.

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“While I’m standing here with you, there are children without food in Puerto Rico,” Cruz said, according to NBC News.

“During all the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, there’s been a feature of the Trump administration and that is that they take away the aid before it’s done,” she added.

Cruz and Trump feuded publicly over the Trump administration’s response to Maria, with Cruz at one point appearing on television wearing a T-shirt with the words “help us, we are dying” to criticize Trump’s boasting about the “incredible job” his agencies were doing.

While stores, gas stations, banks and ATMs are reopening, more than 35 percent of residents still do not have a way to safely store food in refrigerators, NBC News reported. Fresh water has been restored to 96 percent of residents.

Cruz said she recently had to send powdered milk to a school that has no water, electricity or milk for their students.

“We need the help and it’s not help, we have paid for it,” Cruz said, according to NBC.

Other lawmakers have also spoken out against Trump’s response to hurricanes Maria and Irma, which devastated American territories.

“This is outrageous,” Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said of FEMA’s move. “In New Orleans [after Hurricane Katrina], FEMA stayed there for 10 years. This is another sign of a president that is totally disengaged from how they treat fellow citizens in the island of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

Cruz was invited to Trump’s first State of the Union address by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday night.

“There is a need in Puerto Rico and we ask the president to, for once, do the right thing and not take the aid away from Puerto Rico,” Gillibrand said.

FEMA’s public affairs director, William Booher, clarified that the agency will continue to have a volunteer presence through nonprofits in rural areas of Puerto Rico but that “FEMA provided commodities are no longer needed for emergency operations.”