Tesla CEO Elon Musk has alleged FEMA has spent around $59 million in taxpayer money, to pay for illegal immigrants to stay in hotels in New York City.
According to the Washington Examiner, Musk’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found that the Biden administration had paid for luxury hotels in New York City to house the growing issue of illegal immigrants within the city.
In a post on his social media platform X, Musk said DOGE has discovered the spending, and demanded those funds be paid back.
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk wrote. “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! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
The Examiner further reported that spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an email the person responsible for spending that money on housing illegals in hotels, can expect to be fired.
“As Secretary Noem said yesterday, we must get rid of FEMA the way it exists today. This is yet another egregious example,” McLaughlin wrote. “Individuals who circumvented leadership and unilaterally made this payment will be fired and held accountable.”
In a clip from October 2024, posted to X on Monday, Musk says the spending by the federal government is “staggering.”
“The amount of waste that happens with the federal government is really staggering,” Musk said. “It’s a staggering amount of waste of taxpayer money. For any given expenditure, we have to say, well what does this do for the citizens of America? How is this good for the people of America? It’s their money.”
Musk further stated politicians act like taxpayer money belongs to them.
“For some weird reason, a lot of people in the state or whatever, the politicians, they seem to forget that the money being spent is your money. And if it’s not being spent in a way that’s beneficial to the American people, it’s a misuse of the funds. There’s a lot of money being spent where illegals are getting more benefits than citizens. Like, what the heck is that? That doesn’t make any sense,” Musk said.
