The Department of Homeland Security has suspended former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick from doing business with the federal government, cutting off the Florida Democrat from contracts, grants, and any other federal funds, after a grand jury indictment charged her with stealing millions in COVID-19 disaster relief money and funneling it into her own campaign.
DHS General Counsel James Percival did not mince words about the agency's rationale. He called the alleged scheme "outright fraud" and said his office was taking the first step to hold the former congresswoman accountable.
The suspension, first reported by Fox News Digital, also covers Cherfilus-McCormick's brother Edwin Cherfilus, other associates, and affiliated entities named in the federal indictment. The action aligns with President Donald Trump's executive order establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Vice President JD Vance leads.
A Miami grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick in November 2025 for allegedly stealing approximately $5 million from FEMA. Prosecutors say the money originated from an overpayment on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, as Just The News reported. The funds were then allegedly spread across multiple accounts to conceal the theft.
The New York Post reported the total amount at issue may be as high as $5.7 million, with at least $3.6 million ultimately reaching her 2021 congressional campaign. That detail frames the alleged scheme not merely as garden-variety government waste but as a deliberate pipeline from taxpayer-funded disaster relief into personal political ambition.
Percival laid out the DHS position in blunt terms:
"Former Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick abused Americans' trust in the most egregious way possible. She manipulated the COVID-19 crisis to funnel over $5 million of FEMA relief funds to her and her family members. This is outright fraud. That's exactly what a federal grand jury and the U.S. House of Representatives found."
He added that he was "proud that my office is taking the first step to ensure she is held accountable and American taxpayers' money is protected from further misuse."
The criminal indictment was only part of the reckoning Cherfilus-McCormick faced. The House Ethics Committee conducted its own investigation and found she had committed 18 campaign finance violations, five counts of false financial disclosures, three counts of misusing official funds, and one count of lack of candor, at least 25 violations in total, according to the subcommittee's findings.
The committee was scheduled to recommend punishment for misusing disaster relief funding that she allegedly funneled through several companies into her campaign coffers. Republicans vowed to force a vote to expel Cherfilus-McCormick from the chamber.
She resigned first. In late April, just ahead of the ethics panel's scheduled action, Cherfilus-McCormick stepped down from the 119th Congress. Her resignation statement framed the decision as a matter of principle rather than guilt:
"Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida's 20th district. I hereby resign from the 119th Congress, effective immediately."
She also claimed the process was unfair, saying it "refused my new attorney's reasonable request for time to prepare my defense." She added: "I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished."
The timeline tells a different story than her framing suggests. She was indicted in November 2025. The ethics committee compiled its findings. A rare public ethics hearing loomed. And only when the walls closed in, with Republicans ready to force an expulsion vote, did she announce her departure.
One detail stands out in the political fallout: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., did not call on Cherfilus-McCormick to step down before her resignation announcement. That silence from the top Democrat in the House speaks for itself.
When a member of your own caucus faces a federal indictment for allegedly stealing millions in disaster relief money, and your party's leader cannot bring himself to say "resign," voters are entitled to wonder where the accountability standards are. Internal Democratic tensions over the case had been building for weeks, yet Jeffries held his tongue publicly.
Cherfilus-McCormick has denied wrongdoing. She has not, however, abandoned her political career. Fox News Digital reported she is still running to regain her congressional seat this November, a remarkable posture for someone under federal indictment and now formally barred from receiving federal funds.
The Cherfilus-McCormick suspension fits into a wider campaign by the Trump administration to claw back COVID-era fraud losses. The Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, established by executive order and led by Vice President Vance, was directed to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in federal benefit programs, restore integrity to taxpayer-funded safety-net programs, and ensure benefits reach only eligible Americans.
Vance said last week that the task force has been "working around the clock to root out fraudsters who have taken advantage of Americans' generosity for far too long."
The numbers back up the claim of a broad effort. Since the task force launched, it has exposed 447 California hospices suspected of more than $600 million in fraud. The U.S. Small Business Administration has referred more than 560,000 fraudulent COVID-era loans totaling $22 billion to the Treasury for collection.
Those figures, $22 billion in suspect SBA loans alone, illustrate the staggering scale of pandemic-era grift that the federal government is only now beginning to address. The Cherfilus-McCormick case is one thread in a much larger fabric of alleged abuse. But it is a particularly brazen one, because the person accused of orchestrating the scheme was a sitting member of Congress, someone entrusted with writing the very laws that govern how disaster funds are distributed.
The pattern of financial discrepancies among Democratic members of Congress raises a fair question about whether the institutions meant to police elected officials are working fast enough.
Several questions hang over the case. The specific companies through which the disaster relief funds were allegedly routed into campaign accounts have not been publicly identified in detail. The full list of associates and entities suspended alongside Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother remains unclear beyond what the indictment names.
Fox News Digital reached out to Cherfilus-McCormick's campaign for comment. No response was reported.
The criminal case will proceed through the courts. Cherfilus-McCormick has denied the allegations and cast the proceedings as politically motivated. A jury will ultimately weigh the evidence. But the DHS suspension does not require a conviction, it is an administrative action designed to protect taxpayer money while the case is resolved.
That distinction matters. The federal government does not need to wait for a guilty verdict to stop writing checks to someone under indictment for stealing federal money. The suspension is not punishment. It is basic fiscal hygiene, the kind of common-sense safeguard that should have been in place long before now.
Cherfilus-McCormick resigned minutes before the ethics panel could act. She avoided expulsion by a hair. But you cannot resign your way out of a federal indictment, and you cannot campaign your way past a DHS suspension.
When a former congresswoman stands accused of turning FEMA disaster funds into campaign cash, and still asks voters to send her back to Washington, the system had better have guardrails. At least now, one of them is in place.