Four employees of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been terminated, the Department of Homeland Security has informed Fox News. This comes after the revelation by Elon Musk on X on 10 February, claiming that FEMA employees were caught funnelling $59 million to hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants, despite the directive of the Trump administration not to do so.
Among the four people fired were Chief Financial Officer Mary Comans, along with two programme analysts and a grant specialist. A New York City Hall spokesperson has confirmed also to Fox News that they received payments from FEMA last week.
This is an especially egregious case of public fund mismanagement, given that FEMA ran out of funds to help the victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina in late 2024, as then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted at the time. Some of the hurricane victims have still not been able to return to their homes since.
Musk described the housing as ‘luxury hotels’ in his tweet, and stressed that the Trump administration will do everything in its power to recoup those funds. At the press gaggle in the Oval Office with President Trump, he added: ‘They paid twice the normal room rate. So it’s a racket.’
The housing of illegal migrants in New York City hotels has been a thorny issue for conservatives for a while now.
FEMA is partnering with Customs and Border Control to run the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), under which the migrants were put up in nice hotels in New York City.
According to an article by PJ Media, in June 2024, as much as 15 per cent of all New York City hotel rooms were occupied by illegal migrants under the SSP programme. This has led to a surge in hotel room prices in the city, which, in turn, can hurt tourism, the article explained.
‘Since July 2022, NYC has taken in more than 200,000 illegal migrants, as the Biden administration allowed millions of invaders to cross the US border with Mexico. New York City officials were forced to scramble to find places to house the new arrivals, many with criminal backgrounds. Adams turned to local hotel operators still struggling from the pandemic due to the drop in tourism, who were eager at the time to take the illegals in,’ PJ Media wrote last summer.
President Trump has also reacted to the FEMA scandal in a post on Truth Social. He wrote:
‘FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation. THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED. IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT.’
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