Fema Chief Contradicts Trump’s Claims That Disaster Aid Went To Migrants

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency undercut President Donald Trump’s false statements that the agency spent disaster aid on undocumented migrants, noting in court papers that the money came from a special fund that is separate from recovery efforts.

Cameron Hamilton, acting administrator of FEMA, wrote in a court filing this week that FEMA migrant aid is funded through a program intended “to provide temporary shelter and other services to aliens released from custody.”

Trump and his supporters, including Republicans in Congress and Hamilton himself, have spread misinformation in accusing the agency of diverting disaster aid to help migrants who illegally crossed the southwest border into the United States. Hamilton used his personal X account to amplify the false accusations months before Trump appointed him to run the agency.

He tacitly walked those claims back in Tuesday’s court filing by citing laws that Congress — including the Republican-controlled House — passed in 2023 and 2024 to create and fund the Shelter and Services Program, which offers hotel rooms to migrants who were released from federal custody after entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico.

Hamilton's court filing is part of the Trump administration's defense against a lawsuit that Democratic attorneys general filed in Rhode Island to block a planned freeze of federal grants. A federal judge on Thursday granted the administration's request to halt payments under the Shelter and Services Program.

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.

Controversy over the program reached a high point this week when Elon Musk falsely claimed that FEMA was using disaster aid to pay for luxurious hotel rooms for migrants. It triggered a series of events that mushroomed Wednesday, including government actions to reclaim $80 million that FEMA had given to New York City to shelter migrants at city hotels.

“I have clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote Wednesday afternoon.

A day earlier, Noem fired four FEMA employees, including Chief Financial Officer Mary Comans, who processed payments to New York City that FEMA had approved in 2024, months before Trump was elected.

Noem’s statement Wednesday undercut her own assertions that New York City housed migrants in “luxury hotels” by noting that migrants were staying in the Roosevelt Hotel. The once-grand accommodation in midtown Manhattan closed in 2020 and has been used in recent years for temporary migrant housing.

On Wednesday, Noem called the Roosevelt Hotel a “base of operations” for Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.

Hamilton expanded on the Roosevelt Hotel in his court filing.

“The vicious Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua has taken over the hotel and is using it as a recruiting center and base of operations to plan a variety of crimes,” Hamilton wrote. The crimes “include gun and drug sales as well as sex trafficking, which can reasonably be presumed to be conducted in the hotel itself.”

Musk in a post on X on Monday said he found that FEMA gave $59 million last week “to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.”

“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!” wrote Musk, who leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Hamilton responded to Musk’s post by saying, “I want to thank the@DOGE team for making me aware of this,” and he added that the payments “have all been suspended."