The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has fired four employees, including FEMA’s Chief Financial Officer Mary Comans, over the galling $59 million payment made last week to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal aliens.

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk on Monday sounded the alarm about the payout on X, Monday morning and acting FEMA Director Cameron Hamilton quickly responded that the payments would be stopped and those responsible “held accountable.”

The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement Tuesday saying “Effective immediately, FEMA is terminating the employment of four individuals for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants. Firings include FEMA’s Chief Financial Officer, two program analysts and a grant specialist.”

The statement continued:  “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people.”

President Trump has made straightening out FEMA one of his top priorities.

The president visited storm-ravaged North Carolina on January 24 in the first stop of a multi-leg disaster tour before heading out to fire-ravaged Southern California.

“We’re going to fix it, and we’re going to fix it as fast as you can,” Trump told reporters after stepping off Air Force One at Asheville Airport. “It’s a massive amount of damage. FEMA has really let us down. Let the country down. And I don’t know if that’s Biden’s fault or whose fault it is, but we’re going to take over. We’re going to do a good job.”

Trump later told a roundtable of federal and local officials that he would be “signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA — or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, that FEMA’s not good.”

The president asked his FEMA council to have  its first meeting within 90 days and to issue a report of the findings on his desk within 180 days of it’s first meeting.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in an interview Sunday that she supports getting rid of FEMA “the way it exists today.”

In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union, Noem told CNN’s Dana Bash that President Trump has every right to shut the agency down, if, upon inspection, the agency proves irredeemable.

“I believe that he will do that evaluation with his team,” Noem said. “And he’s talking about it, which I’m grateful for. He’ll work with Congress, though, to make sure that it’s done correctly and that we’re still there to help folks who have a terrible disaster or a crisis in their life. He’s been very clear that he still believes there’s a role for the federal government to come in and help people get back up on their feet. But there’s a lot of fraud and waste and abuse out there. And since President Trump has taken over and come back into this administration, we’ve seen incredible change.”

Asked what she would tell Trump if he asked her to get rid of FEMA, Noem replied, “I would say yes, get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.”