Judicial Watch Uncovers NYC’s Multimillion FEMA Spending Spree to House and Feed Migrants

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received 710 pages of records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that detail New York City spending millions of dollars in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds over just a few months to house and feed migrants.

Judicial Watch filed the May 2025 lawsuit after the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of Homeland Security, failed to respond to a February 2025 FOIA request for records of payments and funding allocations, internal communications and directives, as well as policy and procedural guidelines (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:25-cv-01579)).

The new records show that, during the Biden-Harris administration in Fiscal Years 2023 and 2024, New York City received $188 million from the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), a federal grant program administered by FEMA in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The records include invoices which show the federal funds were spent on around-the-clock security staffing at a converted Manhattan office building used as a migrant shelter, and daily meal delivery to migrants housed across 33 New York City hotels.

Arrow Security billed New York City Health and Hospital Corporation approximately $3 million for just two consecutive billing periods of security guard services at a single Manhattan building. Invoice No. 3035303 totaled $1,593,080.38 for 28 days (August 28 – September 24, 2023), and Invoice No. 3037366 totaled $1,401,765.56 for the following 35 days (September 25 – October 29, 2023), both at the Candler Building HERRC at 209-213 W 42nd Street for a daily security cost of approximately $47,538 at that location.

Whitsons Food Service invoiced $583,152.90 for a single week of meal delivery to migrants across 33 New York City hotel and shelter sites. Invoice No. CI2402968, dated March 22, 2024, covered breakfast, lunch, and dinner deliveries billed to the city’s Department of Homeless Services.

The 33 Homeland Security migrant shelter sites receiving Whitsons meal deliveries included multiple major hotel chains: Red Roof Inn, Ramada, Ramada Inn, Comfort Inn, Wingate by Wyndham (JFK Airport), Best Western (Kensington), Days Inn (Sunset Park), Super 8, Wyndham Garden LIC, Courtyard/Fairfield, and Hotel Archer — alongside independent properties such as Artel 535, the Bogart Hotel, Le Jolie, Brooklyn Motor Inn.

LIC COM LLC, a Long Island City food service commissary, billed $1,200,921.29 across ten heavily redacted invoices for food delivery at an undisclosed shelter site between March 2023 and May 2024. The invoices were submitted as part of a Fiscal Year 2023 SSP drawdown with each line item under $5,000. All descriptions, quantities, prices, customer identity, and delivery site are redacted under (b)(4), making it impossible to determine from the production what was delivered, to whom, or at what per-meal cost. The largest single invoice was $468,787.50 for 14 days in October 2023.

“We have the receipts – millions in taxpayer dollars were used by the Biden administration to provide virtually unlimited free housing and food to countless illegal aliens in New York City,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

In February 2025, Cameron Hamilton, former acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reportedly suspended payments to New York City to house migrants and said that staff who made the payments will be held accountable.  

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