The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) handed out $59 million to “luxury” hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants, Elon Musk said Monday.
Musk — who leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a temporary agency within the Trump administration tasked with weeding out frivolous spending by the federal government — said it was his DOGE team that made the discovery. The top White House official said the payment was in violation of President Donald Trump’s executive order and efforts would be made to recover the funds.
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk posted on X. “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”
“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!” he continued. “A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
The details around the alleged payout are not completely clear. FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, nor did a spokesperson for DOGE.
Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in October denied the Biden administration was using FEMA funds for migrant accommodations, but in 2022 she suggested that the agency was assisting cities with the migrant crisis.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order that placed a temporary suspension on refugee resettlement into the United States. The president additionally noted how some major cities, like New York City and Chicago, have requested federal aid to help manage the massive influx of migrants entering their jurisdictions.
The president additionally signed an executive order placing a freeze on federal grants and loans as it conducts a review of the government’s spending, but that order has since been blocked by the courts.
However, New York City officials have a long history of placing illegal migrants into four-star hotels as they’ve struggled to find accommodations for the sheer number of asylum seekers flocking to the Big Apple.
New York City began housing migrants in the four-star Collective Paper Factory hotel around August 2023 after it was reorganized into a Department of Homeless Services emergency shelter. The five-story Collective Paper Factory itself is equipped with a restaurant, a gym, a bar, meeting rooms for guests and communal spaces.
The “chic” Square Hotel was converted into housing for migrants. Other “upscale” hotels in the Big Apple have also been converted into migrant housing in the past as city officials continue to deal with the migrant crisis, including The Row, which has also been described as a “four-star hotel.”
“A 4-star hotel is considered luxury lodging,” according to Kayak, a company that provides hotel booking services. “Guest rooms are noticeably more spacious, with top-quality linens, pillowtop mattresses, bathrobes, slippers, minibars, and upscale toiletries, plus equipped kitchens.”
NYC’s Department of Homeless Services was reportedly seeking a contract with local hotels to provide roughly 14,000 rooms in order to shelter migrants through 2025. City officials anticipated spending on migrants in need of housing for the current fiscal year and the past two years combined will exceed $2.3 billion, with a significant amount of these costs going toward hotel rent.
The Big Apple — a sanctuary city jurisdiction with strict laws restricting cooperation between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has become a major destination for the massive number of illegal migrants who’ve flocked into the United States. Roughly 230,000 migrants have arrived in NYC since the spring of 2022, according to data provided by the mayor’s office.
FEMA underwent an internal investigation in November after it was uncovered that a supervisor reportedly instructed disaster relief workers deployed in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton to avoid houses with Trump signs.
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