Elon Musk announced that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found that FEMA spent nearly $60 million on illegal immigrants staying in luxury hotels.
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk wrote on X. “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order. 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,” he said.
Last month, President Donald Trump established a council to assess FEMA.
“Americans deserve an immediate, effective, and impartial response to and recovery from disasters,” Trump’s order read. “FEMA therefore requires a full-scale review, by individuals highly experienced at effective disaster response and recovery, who shall recommend to the President improvements or structural changes to promote the national interest and enable national resilience.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has called for a re-evaluation of FEMA.
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Noem if Trump “can and should” shut FEMA down, to which Noem replied, “He can. And I believe that he will do that evaluation with his team.”
And he’s talking about it, which I’m grateful for. He’ll work with Congress, though, to make sure that it’s done correctly and that we’re still there to help folks who have a terrible disaster or a crisis in their life. He’s been very clear that he still believes there’s a role for the federal government to come in and help people get back up on their feet. But there’s a lot of fraud and waste and abuse out there. And since President Trump has taken over and come back into this administration, we’ve seen incredible change.”
“We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California,” Noem explained. “But you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed so it can be deployed much quicker. And we don’t need this bureaucracy that’s picking and choosing winners.”
