Actress Patricia Heaton slammed FEMA and former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for leaving North Carolina residents — who lost homes in Hurricane Helene — in tents when the agency reportedly had enough money to house “illegal migrants” in “luxury” hotels in New York City just last week.
In a post on Monday on X, the 66-year-old actress reacted to a post from Elon Musk about how his “[Department of Government Efficiency] DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M 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!”
“So those poor folks in North Carolina who were told by Mayorkas there wasn’t enough money to help them had to sleep in tents all this time,” Heaton wrote.
In October, Mayorkas claimed to reporters that FEMA was running out of money and did not have the resources to make it to the end of the season.
Last month, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, dozens of victims from the hurricane were kicked out of the hotels they were staying in as their FEMA-sponsored vouchers expired, according to North Carolina’s Republican senators, as The Daily Wire previously reported.
North Carolina Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis both posted on X that they had heard from dozens of constituents in western North Carolina that they had nowhere to go after their temporary FEMA housing assistance expired.
FEMA responded by saying that it had expanded its housing program for those who had lost their homes in Helene until the end of March 2025.
“My office is hearing from dozens in WNC who have been kicked out of their hotels tonight, despite FEMA’s announcement yesterday that they were extending Transitional Sheltering Assistance through January 25,” Budd posted. “This is unacceptable. This needs to be fixed TONIGHT.”
Tillis reported a similar situation, saying that many kicked out of the hotels had nowhere to go with below freezing temperatures in the area.
Speaking to The Daily Wire, FEMA said that since September 2024, the agency had housed nearly 13,000 families displaced by devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Helene.
A spokesman said that its Transitional Sheltering Assistance program was still in place, including in western North Carolina, and had been extended until the end of March 2025.
The agency said that “hotel stays” on Tuesday ended for survivors who now had a habitable home due to inspection or for people who did not have “not have eligible damages to a home or rental unit caused by Tropical Storm Helene.”
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