Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned FEMA is out of money as it scrambles to help flood-ravaged areas of Georgia and North Carolina, where stranded residents are begging for help and reporting that the federal government has yet to show up or provide any aid following Hurricane Helene. 

Mr. Mayorkas said FEMA now needs additional federal funding, but Republicans in Congress are angry over the agency’s massive spending on illegal immigrants while desperate flood victims await help more than a week after the storm.

There has been no sign of FEMA or any other federal entity in Hendersonville, North Carolina, said Donnie Loftis, a Republican in the state legislature.

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“I haven’t seen any federal folks. I haven’t seen FEMA or local emergency crews. It’s just neighbor helping neighbor,” Mr. Loftis told The Washington Times.

Mr. Loftis on Thursday delivered much-needed supplies to a local church in Hendersonville, which sits about 30 minutes north of Asheville, one of the hardest hit areas in the state. He said the church is providing supplies, water, and pet food to those impacted by the storm.

Those supplies, Mr. Loftis said, came from nearby churches that rose to the occasion, not the state or federal government.

“I think it is insufficient,” he said. “People say they’ve seen nothing from the federal government out here. It’s just neighbor helping neighbor.” 

The criticism comes amid revelations that programs under FEMA spent more than $1 billion over the past two years, including $380 million allocated in late August, to help communities settle thousands of illegal immigrants encountered at the Southern border and released into communities across the U.S. The money was provided by Congress and signed into law by the president specifically to pay for housing and services for illegal immigrants, which have flooded into the U.S. in record numbers under the Biden administration.

At a campaign rally, former President Donald Trump said Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris had again put migrants ahead of Americans.

“The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money. … They spent it all on illegal migrants,” Mr. Trump told the crowd in Saginaw, Michigan.

He said the administration “stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”

Mr. Trump called it “the worst response in the history of hurricanes.”

“A certain president — I will not name him — destroyed his reputation with Katrina. And this is doing even worse,” Mr. Trump said in a reference to Republican President George W. Bush.

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said American citizens were again paying the price for the Biden-Harris administration’s “self-inflicted border crisis.”

“President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris must put Americans first and take action now to reverse their open borders policies that are bleeding Americans dry,” he told The Times.

Mr. Biden faced mounting criticism Thursday for overseeing a slow government response to Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane. More than 200 deaths have been reported so far, and hundreds of people are still missing, mostly in North Carolina.

Many are stranded in rural areas where roads and entire towns are decimated, and they have relied on help from private citizens and organizations because the government hasn’t shown up.  

A defensive Mr. Biden on Thursday disputed claims that his administration was caught off-guard by Hurricane Helene, insisting that he had a plan in place even before the deadly storm made landfall.

“Days before the storm hit, I pre-positioned extensive resources on the ground throughout the Southeast, extensively — first responders, search and rescue teams, food, water, ambulances — before Helene made landfall,” Mr. Biden said after touring the damage in Ray City, Georgia.

He added that he had approved disaster relief funding before the storm, unlocking federal aid for the states impacted by the hurricane, including Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. 

Mr. Biden announced Wednesday he would deploy 1,000 active-duty soldiers to North Carolina to speed the delivery of food, water and medicine to isolated parts of the state, which faces the highest death toll from Helene.

Mr. Mayorkas, meanwhile, warned there is no money left should another natural disaster strike.

He said this week that FEMA is out of disaster relief money after pouring resources into areas decimated by Helene. The storm is expected to cost $26 billion in property damage alone and will take years and billions of dollars to restore impacted areas.  

Mr. Mayorkas warned of empty FEMA coffers as a tropical storm developed that could impact Florida and the Gulf Coast in the coming days. 

There was a 30% chance of the tropical storm developing into a hurricane as of Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center. More storms are expected in October, which is in the peak Atlantic hurricane season. 

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what is imminent,” Mr. Mayorkas said at the White House on Wednesday

There are calls for lawmakers to return to Capitol Hill and pass an emergency funding measure to help the stricken states. A House aide told The Times that FEMA just received a $20 billion boost for disaster mitigation in the temporary funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Mr. Biden in September. 

“We are urging the administration to take what it has now, which is a lot, get it out the door and get it to the impacted communities where it needs to be,” the aide said.

• Mallory Wilson contributed to this report.