Lincoln County has decided not to apply for a FEMA grant after the Trump administration added a requirement that recipients participate in federal immigration enforcement.
Speaking at a commissioner's meeting last week, administrator Carrie Kipfer said the county regularly applies for funding through FEMA's Homeland Security Grant Program, using the money for a variety of projects to improve disaster resilience and response.
"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," Kipfer said.
She said the new grant language would have required local agencies to participate in joint operations with federal agents, and detain immigrants at the request of federal officials.
Kipfer said she decided not to apply because those conditions violate county policy.
"I didn't, with good faith, think that we could apply for these grant funds, knowing that we were going to be required to fall within those terms and conditions," Kipfer told commissioners.
Emily Huber, director of the county's Emergency Management Agency, said they were going to apply for roughly $90,000 this year, to fund upgrades to communication towers and purchase drug identification kits for the sheriff's department.
Now, she said she's worried about the potential long-term consequences for disaster response infrastructure.
"If we don't have the funds, we're going to have to start going to taxpayers and asking for more from our taxpayers to complete these projects to continue to build up the infrastructure and keep the county safe," Huber said.
The grants division of the Maine Emergency Management Agency, which distributes the funding, was not immediately available for comment.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey in May joined a multistate coalition suing the Trump administration for adding immigration enforcement provisions to federal grants.
