Four Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees, including a top-level executive, have been fired after sending millions of dollars to New York City to house and care for illegal migrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“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 officials said in a statement obtained by The Post.
The firings, first reported by Fox News, 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,” the statement added.
On Monday, Elon Musk, who runs the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), posted on X that his team had discovered that FEMA has recently paid out $59 million meant for disaster relief to the Big Apple for “luxury hotels” to house illegal migrants.
“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high-end hotels for illegals,” Musk posted on X on Monday — and promised DOGE would be making “a clawback demand … to recoup those funds.”
City Hall quickly denied Musk’s assertations in a statement, without naming the billionaire, insisiting that it has never paid luxury hotel rates for housing migrants and that the money is not a diaster relief grant.
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 money is authorized and funded by Congress and is separate from FEMA’s disaster relief fund, which is the agency’s main funding stream to help people and governments affected by disasters.
The DHS — which oversees FEMA — directed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to transfer $650 million of its FY2024 appropriation to FEMA for the SSP, according to the Congressional Research Service. CBP is also a part of the DHS.
The DHS statement did not elaborate on how the four FEMA employees violated any policies and Trisha McLaughlin, a spokesman for the security agency, declined to answer questions about the payments.
“As Secretary Noem said yesterday, we must get rid of FEMA the way it exists today,” McLaughlin said.
However, on day one of his presidency, President Trump signed an executive order making it easier to terminate employees in so-called “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.
“Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.”Trump’s budget team also ordered a temporary freeze on federal financial assistance in January pending a review.
The administration announced further executive action on Tuesday — the same day as the firings — to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce with a hiring cap. More than 65,000 employees were already lured out of agencies with buyouts.
Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, speculated to The Post that the FEMA employees had been “fired for cause” since they had been “instructed” by superiors not to commit the funding, referring to the temporary freeze.
So-called “ministerial” federal workers like the fired FEMA staffers can be sacked for not following orders but policy-making appointees have typically enjoyed more job protections, Shapiro noted, explaining the day one executive order.
Federal employee unions, Democratic state attorneys general and others have challenged those orders in court, with judges dealing a blow to the Trump administration in some cases.
But proponents of the administration’s actions have claimed that Trump has the sole authority under the Constitution to hire and fire executive branch employees.
Mike Davis, a fierce ally of Trump and founder of the conservative Article III project, told The Post that court challenges already launched against the president have been “unlawfully sabotaging” his authority.
“He has the constitutional power to hire and fire,” Davis said, pointing to regulations that had hampered Trump’s ability to remake the executive branch.
Meanwhile, Cameron Hamilton, FEMA’s acting administrator, said Monday that the agency had suspended payments sent to New York City to house migrants.
City Hall officials have said they have not been notified of any pause in funding and that no one has contacted them regarding Musk’s clawback demand.
The years-long migrant crisis has so far cost Gotham $7 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 Big Apple received a total of $81 million in funds from FEMA last week, not just the $59 million Musk railed about, city officials said — claiming that only $19 million of the $59 million that the Tesla CEO highlighted will go toward housing migrants in hotels.
The city expects the remaining $30 million of the total $237 million committed by the Biden administration in funding will eventually be ponied up by the feds, the officials told The Post.
With Post Wires
