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  • 2017-09-28 (xsd:date)
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  • Is the Trump Administration Price Gouging Puerto Rico Evacuees and Seizing Passports? (en)
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  • On 28 September 2017, The Hill and Marketwatch both reported that the Trump administration was forcing evacuees from Puerto Rico to sign promissory notes ensuring full repayment for transportation costs and was holding evacuees' passports as collateral: The claim struck a nerve amid a deepening humanitarian crisis in the United States territory of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria caused widespread devastation the week before. The Hill based its report off of Marketwatch's claim, which cited a U.S. Department of State page (Information for Evacuated U.S. Citizens) that was not specific to Hurricane Maria, the Trump administration, or Puerto Rico: The page has no date stamp, indication of when it was published, or information about when such policy was put into place, and the earliest archived version of the page on the Internet Archive was saved on 15 September 2017; Hurricane Maria did not appear until 16 September 2017. However, identical language was published in a September 2014 Department of State handout [PDF], and the policy clearly antedated the Trump administration. A 19 July 2006 article from ABC News reported: The policy gained some traction as a topic of debate in early September 2017. The practice of charging evacuated Americans can be documented back to at least August 1944 [PDF]. However, U.S. Code Title 22, Chapter 38, Section 2671 pertains to the return of Americans citizens from places outside the United States, not transport of American citizens to other American territories or states. (Puerto Ricans are American citizens.) It is possible the authors of the articles mentioned here received information not cited in the article about the situation in Puerto Rico, but also possible that policy was presumed to be implemented with no information one way or the other. Neither article made clear that evacuation (not dispatched aid) was the primary plan for rebuilding Puerto Rico, but in any case the relevance of the decades-old policy to the situation in the territory is unconfirmed. Notably, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act [PDF] (a law pertaining to federal response and natural disaster assistance for state and local governments in carrying out their responsibilities to aid citizens) defines hurricanes such as Maria as applicable natural disasters and Puerto Rico as part of the United States: Although it is true that the Department of State billed evacuees for repatriation as far back as 1944, the Trump administration did not invent the policy. By 29 September 2017, The Hill edited their article to reflect that the claim was in fact false: (en)
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