A post from Elon Musk last month trumpeted a supposedly startling discovery by his team of government cost-cutters: The Federal Emergency Management Agency had provided $59 million to house immigrants in the country illegally in New York City. The money, he declared, was “meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!”
But if Musk’s goal was to funnel more FEMA money to disaster aid, the fallout from his declaration had the opposite effect.
A pair of Trump administration orders, issued soon after the Feb. 10 social media post, aimed to block any agency money from helping immigrants in the country illegally and “sanctuary” jurisdictions protecting them left FEMA staff without sufficient guidance about how to proceed, effectively freezing payments on billions of dollars in disaster grants, according to two people briefed on the process and an internal document viewed by The New York Times.
While the freeze did not stop aid going directly to disaster survivors, it has disrupted payments to states, local governments and nonprofits, with ramifications felt across the country.
In Florida, a nonprofit that helps hurricane survivors find housing and other services noticed its promised FEMA payments stopped coming, raising fears that it will have to trim operations. In southeastern Michigan, communities hit by devastating floods two years ago are waiting for federal money to cover the cost of rebuilding.
And in Helene-ravaged western North Carolina, Warren Wilson College has been hoping to hear in recent weeks about an application for aid to repair damaged roofs and clear debris from research fields, but has heard nothing.
“There’s a deep sadness when walking through all that debris, knowing all that was lost,” said Rosemary Thurber, 22, a 2 student at the college whose studies have been disrupted. She said she and her fellow students were “losing faith in our federal government.”
The funding freeze illustrates the extraordinary power of Musk, who has increasingly pointed his Department of Government Efficiency at exposing funding that benefits immigrants in the country illegally and whose demands regularly prompt responses from senior government officials.
Musk’s early morning post on X, the social platform he owns, was followed hours later by a memo from Cameron Hamilton, the acting head of FEMA, saying the agency had stopped payments under a variety of grant programs, and given DOGE “full system access to our financial management system.” Nine days later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency includes FEMA, signed the first of two agency orders that took aim at migrant funding and effectively spread the freeze across almost all of the agency’s grants.
After The New York Times submitted a list of questions about the freeze Monday, Noem on Tuesday signed a memo authorizing agency staff to exempt certain grants from the immigration-related orders, according to a person briefed on the change. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Times’ questions.
A representative for the White House and DOGE did not respond to questions this week.
The FEMA press office said in a separate statement last week that it attributed to an unnamed homeland security official: “FEMA is taking swift action to ensure the alignment of its grant programs with President Trump and Secretary Noem’s direction that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used wisely and for mission-critical efforts.”
The freeze has played out against the backdrop of widespread upheaval at the disaster relief agency, highlighted by Noem’s assertion during a Monday Cabinet meeting that “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.”
It is not clear what government agencies, if any, would take over FEMA’s role delivering aid to communities hit by disasters.
In the short term, however, many communities that see FEMA grants as a lifeline are still waiting.
FEMA’s existential crisis arguably began last fall, when Hurricane Helene killed more than 100 people in North Carolina and damaged more than 73,000 homes. The destruction quickly became part of the presidential campaign.
Within a week of the hurricane, FEMA had provided more than $45 million in disaster relief and sent more than 1,500 personnel, according to the agency. But as survivors struggled to regain access to basic services, many concluded that FEMA was failing to do enough.
That message was amplified by President Donald Trump and Musk, who began criticizing FEMA for spending its money to house immigrants in the country illegally rather than help hurricane survivors.
DOGE members arrived at the agency’s downtown Washington headquarters in early February to begin going through contract and grant payments.
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