Federal disaster workers are being advised to replace the word “noncitizen” with “alien” in official documents and to remove phrases such as “social justice” and “global warming” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency memo obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News lists 34 words and phrases that should be removed from FEMA documents.
FEMA provides roughly $50 billion a year in disaster aid and grants. Under former President Joe Biden, the agency sought to end practices that resulted in low-income or minority communities receiving less help.
The memo was sent by a senior career FEMA official to about 25 workers as guidance to help them comply with White House mandates on climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, according to a FEMA employee.
The deletions could signal that a FEMA program is slated for termination, potentially disrupting aid that has gone to areas that are most vulnerable to natural disasters due in part to demographics such as income and education levels.
Hispanic advocates assailed the directive to use “alien” instead of “noncitizen” or “migrant” and to use “assimilation” instead of “integration.”
The revisions “are intended to minimize and dehumanize millions of Latinos living in the United States,” Roman Palomares, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said in a statement to E&E News.
Using “assimilation” and terms such as “undocumented alien” and “illegal alien” aims to “erase the cultural self-identity of future generations of Latinos,” Palomares said.
Olivia Juarez, public land program director at GreenLatinos, said using “assimilation” instead of “integration” is a “strategy to paint immigrants as infiltrators.”
“Immigrants are part of our communities, and they contribute to the communities where they work and live with their families,” Juarez said in an email.
FEMA and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The FEMA memo reflects Trump’s efforts and executive orders aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, known as DEI, and removing undocumented migrants from the United States.
Some of the newly forbidden terms such as “carbon footprint,” “net zero” and “green” are “pretty vanilla terms these days,” said a former senior FEMA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “I’m a little surprised that some of those terms are being directed to be removed.”
Carlos Martín, a leading disaster researcher and a vice president at Resources for the Future, was astonished by the suggestion to use “alienage” in place of “noncitizenship. ”Is ‘alienage’ even a word?” Martín said in an email. “I’m not sure how any of this supports survivors after disasters, or communities before.”
On Tuesday, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to provide information on the recent firing of 400 department employees, including 200 people at FEMA. “Firing homeland security professionals en masse … when the Nation is facing threats from cyber criminals, deadly natural disasters, and aviation vulnerabilities undermines the Department’s mission,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter.
‘A backslide’
The FEMA memo, titled “Recovery Guidance for Terminology Changes,” was sent Feb. 19 to employees in FEMA’s recovery directorate, which oversees disaster recovery.
“To comply with Executive Actions and DHS memos to remove language from policy and doctrine concerning gender, DEI, immigration and climate change, please replace and/or remove the terminology listed below,” the memo says.
The first section of the memo lists seven words such as “noncitizen” and their replacement terms. The second section lists 10 phrases that are “climate change terminology to remove,” including phrases such as “changing climate,” “climate resilience,” and “net zero.”
The third section lists 17 words and phrases that are “DEI terminology to remove” including “inclusion,” “gender identity,” “marginalized” and “social vulnerability,” which entered FEMA lexicon during Trump’s first presidency.
The fourth and final section lists “recommended language” such as “building a resilient nation” and “whole community” and citing federal laws related to civil rights and disaster programs.
“Social vulnerability” refers to the “susceptibility of social groups to the adverse impacts of natural hazards, including disproportionate death, injury, loss, or disruption of livelihood,” according to FEMA.
Agencies and researchers have quantified community social vulnerability by combining a dozen or more demographic indicators related to income, education, age, poverty and, in some cases, race and ethnicity.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had used a “social vulnerability index” for more than a decade to highlight communities that are least able to deal with and recover from disease outbreaks. The CDC recently removedthe index.
FEMA used a social vulnerability index as part of a larger National Risk Index released in 2020 that rates the overall risk faced by each of the nation’s 3,200 counties and 85,000 census tracts to various types of disasters. The risk index uses social vulnerability along with exposure to disasters to give each geographic area a “risk score” for 18 disasters.
The index remained on FEMA’s website Tuesday evening and has been used by other agencies to help identify at-risk communities.
“Vulnerability is a key part of the disaster-recovery equation. It’s fundamental to understanding where an event will have the most consequence,” said another former senior FEMA official. “We may all be exposed to heat, but it’s where the consequences of that heat will be most catastrophic.”
“It really is a backslide in the evolution of disaster-recovery management,” the former official added. “We need to prioritize.”
A third former senior FEMA official said the revised language is not likely to affect the ability of people in disaster areas to get emergency cash and supplies in the immediate aftermath of an event.
The federal law governing disaster response, known as the Stafford Act, requires aid to be allocated “in an equitable and impartial manner, without discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, nationality, sex, age, disability, English proficiency, or economic status.”
“Anybody who would be eligible for assistance, even if they changed the terminology, they’re still going to be eligible for assistance,” the third former FEMA official said. “It should not affect what they do as far as getting individual assistance.”
FEMA gives eligible households in disaster areas several thousand dollars on average to pay for emergency expenses such as lodging, supplies and minor home repairs.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of Roman Palomares, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
