Politics
NEW: FEMA Employees Fired Over Egregious Payments For Illegals
Four Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees, including a senior executive, have been fired over revelations that they sent tens of millions of dollars to New York City to house and care for illegal aliens, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
The firings, which were first reported by Fox News, include FEMA’s chief financial officer, two program analysts and a grant specialist. “Effective immediately, FEMA is terminating the employment of four individuals for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants,” a senior DHS official told the New York Post.
“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,” the statement added.
On Monday, Elon Musk announced that his Department of Government (DOGE) initiative recently discovered that FEMA paid out $59 million meant for disaster relief to New York City officials. The funds were allocated for “luxury hotels” to house illegal aliens. “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk wrote in an X post on Monday.
“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 post continued.
The city denied the claim in a statement, which failed to mention Musk specifically, insisting that the funds were used under a disaster relief grant. They denied claims that illegal aliens were housed in luxury hotels, though several hotels, such as the historic Roosevelt Hotel, have long been used to house them.
The funds, which city officials said were allocated last year under the Biden administration, were likely sent via the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which reimburses cities, towns or organizations for immigration-related expenses, the New York Post reported. Funding under SSP is authorized by Congress and is separate from FEMA’s disaster relief fund, which is the agency’s main funding stream to help American cities and municipalities after disasters.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently announced that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to transfer $650 million of its FY2024 appropriation to the SSP. CBP also falls under the purview of DHS.
It was not made immediately clear how exactly the four fired employees violated agency policies. Trisha McLaughlin, a spokesman for the security agency, declined to answer questions about the payments, further declined to answer questions about the terminations.
“As Secretary Noem said yesterday, we must get rid of FEMA the way it exists today,” McLaughlin said.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order making it easier to fire federal workers in “policy-influencing positions” who fail to implement the president’s agenda. ”They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President,” the order states.
