A federal judge on Wednesday rejected New York City’s request to temporarily prevent the Trump administration from reclaiming over $80 million in federal reimbursement funds originally allocated for migrant shelter and services.
The city’s Law Department, under Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, asked for a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to hand over funds and a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from taking any additional grants out of the city’s account. A judge rejected the request from the bench.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rearden determined that the city had not met the legal threshold required for a temporary restraining order, which would have halted President Donald Trump‘s effort to have the federal government recover the funds.
“In sum, the city has identified no irreparable harm warranting the extraordinary relief it seeks,” Rearden said, according to the New York Daily News.
Reardon’s written decision had not yet been published on the court docket as of Wednesday afternoon.
City officials filed suit last month after the Trump administration, on Feb. 11, withdrew the funds from its central bank account. The Federal Emergency Management Agency disbursed the money just a week earlier. The abrupt withdrawal has highlighted the Trump administration’s sharp pivot away from the Biden-era policies of providing federal aid for migrant housing.
Federal officials have alleged that New York City used the funds to support “alien housing” at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which they claim had become a recruitment center and operational base for a Venezuelan gang.
The controversy surrounding the funding was amplified by tech billionaire Elon Musk, whom Trump has tasked with leading efforts to overhaul the federal bureaucracy.
Musk has said the city spent millions on housing migrants in “luxury hotels.”
FEMA CUTS PAYMENTS TO NYC HOTELS AFTER DOGE ALLEGED FUNDING FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Following these claims, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that she had personally “clawed back” the FEMA money that “deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels.”
The decision marks a setback for New York City’s efforts to secure federal support for its overwhelmed shelter system, as city officials weigh their next legal steps in the dispute with the Trump administration.
