The fallout, like Mr. Trump’s second time period, was dizzying.
Mr. Musk’s put up rapidly stoked outrage amongst conservatives over using taxpayer {dollars} on migrants. The next day, the Trump administration fired 4 FEMA officers, together with the company’s chief monetary officer. And the day after that, on Feb. 12, town’s accountants made a stunning discovery after they checked their ledgers that morning: The cash had disappeared in a single day.
Kristi Noem, the homeland safety secretary, rapidly claimed duty, saying she had “clawed again the total fee that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to N.Y.C. migrant motels.”
The lawsuit argued that the federal authorities tried to justify its actions after the very fact.
On Feb. 19, greater than every week after the clawback, town obtained a letter from Cameron Hamilton, the FEMA appearing director, who threatened to withhold greater than $188 million the company had awarded town, together with the cash it had already seized.
Mr. Hamilton wrote that Homeland Safety had “important considerations that S.S.P. funding goes to entities engaged in or facilitating unlawful actions,” referring to the shelter program. He cited a New York Publish story to argue {that a} Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, had taken over the Roosevelt Resort, one of many metropolis’s largest migrant shelters, a declare town disputed. The letter recommended that town might have been complicit in harboring undocumented immigrants and inspiring unlawful immigration.
Metropolis legal professionals argued that the letter was “cowl” for the Trump administration’s “actual intent, which — as they’ve said publicly — is to withhold the funds completely as a result of they oppose the needs for which the funds have been appropriated, awarded, permitted, and paid.”
In its lawsuit, which claimed that FEMA violated federal rules and the phrases of the Shelter and Providers Program grant, town is looking for the return of the almost $80.5 million and urging a choose to stop the federal authorities from taking more cash from metropolis financial institution accounts.