New York filed a lawsuit Friday asking a judge to restore $80 million in migrant aid money that the Trump administration plucked out of the city’s accounts earlier this month.
City officials said the feds quietly reached into a New York bank account and “grabbed $80,481,861.42,” just a week after the Federal Emergency Management Agency had paid out the funds.
The city said the clawback was illegal, and all the more dastardly because it was done “without communicating any decision or rationale.”
“Because defendants took the extraordinary and lawless measure of seizing money from the City’s bank account — by surprise, and without notice — the city seeks the extraordinary remedy of mandatory injunctive relief to compel defendants to return the money,” Muriel Goode-Trufant, the city’s corporation counsel, told the U.S. court in the southern district of New York.
The money became a flashpoint in the immigration debate after Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an adviser to President Trump, posted about the spending on social media.
He said the payments — which he identified as just $59 million — had been made unlawfully. He said the spending was “discovered” by the Department of Government Efficiency, the White House office Mr. Trump has given Mr. Musk permission to oversee.
“A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds,” Mr. Musk said on Feb. 10.
New York says the money in question — more than $80 million — was all legal, and was paid under the FEMA’s Shelter and Service Program, a $600 million fund allocated by Congress to pay states and localities for welcoming unauthorized migrants into their communities.
New York said it spent billions to accommodate hundreds of thousands of new migrant arrivals under President Biden so it deserved the payback from the feds.
FEMA fired four employees involved in making the payments, and true to Mr. Musk’s promise, the federal government did claw back the money.
The lawsuit comes as New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the Trump administration are in a delicate dance.
The federal Justice Department has moved to dismiss a criminal case against Mr. Adams, even as he’s made overtures to deliver more cooperation with federal deportation authorities.
Those twin moves spurred complaints of a quid pro quo, though the mayor’s team has vehemently denied that suggestion.
Mr. Adams said Friday that he acknowledged the broken immigration system that flooded his city with new arrivals, but said New Yorkers shouldn’t have to bear all of those costs alone.
“The $80 million that FEMA approved, paid and then rescinded — after the city spent more than $7 billion in the last three years — is the bare minimum our taxpayers deserve,” he said. “And that’s why we’re going to work to ensure our city’s residents get every dollar they are owed.”
His lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan.
The FEMA fund to pay communities to accommodate migrants was started by Congress in 2019. It was known as the Emergency Food and Shelter Program-Humanitarian, or EFSP-H.
It got $30 million that first year, and no money in 2020.
But it grew steadily under Mr. Biden, going from $110 million in 2021 to $150 million in 2022. It was allocated $425 million in 2023, then it was renamed the Shelter and Services Program, which got another $364 million that year.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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