Elon Musk claims FEMA sent $59M last week to luxury NYC hotels for illegal migrants — but City Hall says there’s more to the story
Elon Musk contended that the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent a staggering $59 million “last week to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants – a claim that City Hall officials rebutted Monday.
The world’s richest man said in an early morning post on X that the funds were “just discovered” by his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE– even as President Trump called for a complete overhaul of FEMA that could even see it shuttered.
Trump last month signed an executive order to create a council to review FEMA as he expressed concerns over “serious concerns of political bias” in the agency.
“Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk wrote.
“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high-end hotels for illegals,” continued Musk, who leads the agency tasked with cutting back on government overspending.
“A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
Many of Musk’s claims – including whether the money would go toward migrant housing in luxury hotels – couldn’t immediately be confirmed.
Only $19 million of all $237 million in federal funding that has been awarded to the city during the migrant crisis have gone toward hotels, luxury and otherwise, City Hall officials told The Post.
The $59 million in question appears to correspond with long-expected FEMA funding previously disclosed by City Hall, seemingly undercutting Musk’s insinuation that it was a fresh discovery.
The years-long migrant crisis has so far cost Gotham about $6.9 billion, Mayor Eric Adams has said, often lamenting the relative pittance offered by the federal government for what he argues is a national failure.
The city expects roughly $237 million will eventually be ponied up by the feds, but only $81 million of that was paid as of last week, officials told The Post.
Those officials modified the city budget in November to account for $118 million in new FEMA funding through the Shelter and Services Program, a federal program that reimburses certain migrant housing costs in 35 communities in states affected by the border crisis.
Congress set aside $650 million for the overall program, and New York City applied for funds in 2024, federal records show. Customs and Border Patrol works with FEMA to disburse the money allocated by Congress.
The Big Apple ultimately was granted $59 million last year, which corresponds with the FEMA payment that Musk claimed is illegal, records show.
The grant won’t all go toward hotels, instead the majority will be spent on reimbursing other services the city shouldered as it cared for hundreds of thousands of migrants requiring food, health care and other needs as they flowed into the city, officials said.
And the vast majority of the roughly 200 makeshift shelters that housed asylum seekers during the crisis weren’t luxury hotels, with the eye-grabbing exceptions being the swanky Row Hotel and Watson Hotel.
Musk and his DOGE has taken a wrecking ball approach to their mission, which critics have argued is unconstitutional.
Within FEMA, his small team – which doesn’t have a security clearance – has gained access to the agency’s network containing private information of tens of thousands of disaster victims, the Washington Post reported.
The scrutiny on FEMA follows Trump’s high-profile criticism of the agency, which resulted in his executive order.
The 47th president called on the council to have its first meeting within 90 days — saying he expects a report of the findings on his desk within 180 days of the council’s first meeting.
Days earlier, Trump, 78, appeared alongside still-homeless survivors of Hurricane Helene four months after the storm where he raised the idea of overhauling FEMA altogether.
The POTUS slammed the performance of the agency, saying it was “not on the ball … and we’re going to turn it all around.”
The president then told a roundtable of federal and local officials that he will be “signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA — or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, that FEMA’s not good.”
Indeed, the president stayed true to his word.
He also accused the agency — which is responsible for bringing in emergency services, supplies and aid to disaster-struck areas — of bungling emergency relief efforts, adding that US states should be given federal handouts directly in the wake of disasters.
