Washington, DC - Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a senior Member of the House Committees on Homeland Security and the Judiciary, and the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations, today released the following statement following a report indicating that the death toll in Puerto Rico in the six months following Hurricane Maria was exponentially higher when compared to the same period in years past:

“The nation’s reckoning with the 2017 hurricane season continues, even as this year’s hurricane season is well under way. A necessary, yet macabre, task of this effort is coming to terms with the true number of lives lost in Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. From the outset, the official tally that only 64 lives were lost seemed low, and appeared more as an effort to provide cover for the claim that this president and his administration responded flawlessly.

“Today’s report, promulgated by academicians and policy experts at the George Washington University, indicating that the mortality rate in Puerto Rico skyrocketed after Hurricane Maria lends to the claim that the consequences of this storm were far deadlier than once thought. Indeed, this was not a simple error of the count. Today’s report that the six months following Maria led to an additional 2,975 deaths is appalling, and all the more so with the knowledge that this has occurred to American citizens on American soil. Troubling still is that the concern about an undercounted registrar of fatalities was apparent in the immediate aftermath of the storm, but dismissed by a president who was eager to prove that his management of this calamity surpassed that of his predecessors, when in fact it is undoubtedly the most incompetent response to a natural disaster, ever. All told, the president’s mismanagement of and response to this crisis revealed a wholesale incompetence, the results of which were sad, an affront to human dignity, and cost the lives of thousands of American citizens. As a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Federal Emergency Management Agency, I call on our chairman to hold congressional hearings into the administration’s response to this human tragedy.

“It is sad that the President failed his obligation to help the people of Puerto Rico and has compounded this neglect with indifference. There must be major sustained efforts to help the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and my neighbors dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. We must continue this endeavor with the solemnity today’s revised death toll demands and the purpose and bipartisanship the moment requires and that the American people expect.”