New York City Comptroller Brad Lander announced on Friday that the city is suing the Trump administration over $80 million dollars in funding for migrant services that the federal government clawed back from city coffers earlier this week. The missing funds were seized on Tuesday with no notice to any relevant authorities in city government, not even Mayor Adams. Lander, who is running for mayor this year as a Democrat, first spoke publicly on the matter Wednesday morning, calling it “highway robbery” and urging that “New York City cannot take this lying down.”
On Friday, Lander’s office sent a letter to the New York City Law Department insisting on legal redress. “Should the Law Department be unable or unwilling to proceed with legal action,” Lander wrote, “I request immediate authorization for the Comptroller’s Office to engage external legal counsel to represent the City in this matter.” He received a response from the corporation counsel (i.e. head of the Law Department) Muriel Goode-Trufant just hours later confirming that her office “is currently drafting papers with respect to this matter” and that “there is no need for an authorization for the Comptroller’s Office to engage external legal counsel,” according to the New York Post. The Post also reports that the Law Department expects to begin proceedings by February 21st.
The clawback of federal funds appears to be the work of Elon Musk’s DOGE, a temporary advisory entity to the Trump administration whose radical and chaotic diktats over the past month have brought about lawsuits from over a dozen state attorneys general and federal unions representing tens of thousands of workers, among others. On February 10th Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s largest campaign donor, announced on X (a social media platform that he owns) that “The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants […] That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!”
Contrary to Musk’s statement, FEMA does not only manage disaster relief, as its mandate was broadened in 2023 by Congress precisely to manage the influx of migrants through its Shelter and Services Program. $650 million were appropriated for the initiative, with New York City applying for the congressionally-approved funds in 2024 and receiving two separate grants totaling just over $80 million that went towards shelter, food, security, health care and other needs. Two luxury hotels – the Row and the Watson – have been used to temporarily house migrants, but the city has never paid them market rates and the amount of FEMA funds going to them is a very small portion of the agency’s overall grants. The vast majority of migrants are staying in over 200 makeshift shelter facilities across the city.
New York City has so far spent over $7 billion to manage the increased influx of migrants that began in 2022, according to City Hall, most of which came out of the city’s budget with little help from federal authorities. Mayor Adams was a consistent critic of President Biden on this front, accusing his White House of forcing the city to bear the burden of a national crisis.
Mayor Adams, who just this week was released from a federal indictment on corruption charges by Trump’s Department of Justice, has not yet spoken publicly on the matter.
