The Trump administration has fired four Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees for sending $59 million in taxpayer dollars to New York City hotels to house and care for illegal migrants.
The firings come after Elon Musk, whose mission is weeding out frivolous spending within the U.S. government through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) agency, highlighted the price tag in a social media post Monday. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed the firings Tuesday and referred to the payments as “egregious”.
“Effective immediately, FEMA is terminating the employment of four individuals for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants,” DHS said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Firings include FEMA’s Chief Financial Officer, two program analysts and a grant specialist.”
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people,”
President Donald Trump created DOGE through an executive order he signed on his first day in office. The temporary agency within the administration is expected to carry out its mission of rooting out government inefficiency and frivolous spending until July 4, 2026, when its 18-month lifespan comes to an end.
The agency has already identified $1 billion in savings through DEI-related contracts and Musk is working to restructure federal agencies through DOGE that could result in monumental savings for the American taxpayer.
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk posted Monday on X, bringing attention to the transaction. “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 went on. “A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
New York City officials have repeatedly placed illegal migrants into four-star hotels as they’ve struggled to find accommodations for the influx of asylum seekers flocking to the Big Apple.
New York began housing migrants in the four-star Collective Paper Factory hotel around August 2023 after it was repurposed into a Department of Homeless Services emergency shelter. The five-story Collective Paper Factory itself is equipped with a restaurant, a gym, a bar, communal spaces and meeting rooms for guests.
The “chic” Square Hotel was also converted into housing for asylum seekers. Other “upscale” hotels in the Big Apple have been converted into migrant housing in the past as NYC continues 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 hotel booking services website. “Guest rooms are noticeably more spacious, with top-quality linens, pillowtop mattresses, bathrobes, slippers, minibars, and upscale toiletries, plus equipped kitchens.”
New York — a sanctuary jurisdiction with strict laws prohibiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities — has become a major destination for the massive number of illegal migrants who’ve flocked into the United States. Around 230,000 migrants have arrived in NYC since the spring of 2022, according to data provided by the mayor’s office.
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