The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suspended payments intended for New York City to house migrants. A decision that followed a post on X by Elon Musk, who as head of DOGE is expanding his influence over numerous agencies of the federal government.
Over the past weekend, the world’s richest man had reported that his team “just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.” The 53-year-old added that that money could only be used in cases of natural disasters and would be recovered as soon as possible.
Later, Cameron Hamilton, acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, re-shared Musk’s comments and said the payments had been suspended. However, rumors from New York claim that the money received for migrant assistance was appropriated by Congress and awarded to the city last year by the agency.
Neither Hamilton nor Musk specified what kind of fund it was. But the comments about X, likely referred to payments made by the Shelter and Services Program, which disburses money to reimburse cities or organizations for immigration-related expenses.
In 2019, given the increase in the number of migrants coming to the U.S., Congress authorized the federal government to reimburse state and city governments to deal with the emergency. The money comes directly from Congress and is specifically earmarked for Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA administers these payments.
This money is separate from the disaster relief fund. Of course, in recent years the Shelter and Services program has been continually targeted by criticism from GOP figures. For his part, Musk has called the $59 million identified by his team a “gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” as well as a serious waste of money.
In another post on Monday, moreover, the DOGE leader informed that, under the Biden administration, FEMA took money from natural disaster funds and “spent it on 5 star hotels for illegals.” A claim refuted by Liz Garcia, spokeswoman for New York City Mayor Eric Adams: the latter explained that the average cost of a room designated for asylum seekers is $152 per night.
Despite this, FEMA has come under repeated criticism from the administration in recent months. Last month, Trump himself claimed that he wanted to “get rid of the agency.”
