The former chief financial officer at the Federal Emergency Management Agency filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after she was fired for sending funds to house illegal immigrants. 

The Department of Homeland Security fired Mary Comans last month over an $80 million grant to New York City that was meant to reimburse the city for housing illegal immigrants in hotels — an action the Trump administration called illegal.

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However, in a lawsuit filed against DHS and FEMA on Tuesday, Comans said she was “unlawfully terminated from her position” without due process or the opportunity to “appropriately respond” to the charges leveled against her. She further alleged that personnel from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which later slammed her for sending out the funds, had reassured her that distributing them was the right course of action.

Comans was fired “illegally … for doing exactly what I was directed to do by the Trump political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and at the DOGE,” she told CBS News in an interview Thursday. ​​”They told me to do these actions, to make these payments, and then they fired me.”

Comans said she spoke with DOGE employee Brad Smith on Feb. 5, claiming that he delivered “very clear” instructions to keep the funds “flowing” and that “FEMA was doing the right thing in continuing” the payments.

Then, days later, Comans said she was blindsided by Musk’s social media post slamming FEMA for “sending this money” and “violating the law.” 

She swiftly reversed the $80 million in payments and was reassured by management that her job was safe, Comans alleged. The following day, Comans said, a colleague informed her she had been fired.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has similarly argued that the money given to his city was not illegally handed out by FEMA. The federal reimbursements were appropriated to the Big Apple by the Biden administration as part of FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program to provide economic assistance for the city, which was overwhelmed by a surge of illegal immigrants. 

When President Donald Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order prohibiting the distribution of public benefits to people living in the country illegally, including funds from the Shelter and Services Program intended to reimburse expenses related to illegal immigration. It was under this order that Musk, FEMA, and DHS officials said the $80 million disbursement violated the law. The Trump administration rescinded the $80 million from New York City after the payments were made in January. 

However, Adams, a Democrat, has said the $80 million was not illegal because it was approved to be distributed before Trump’s inauguration.

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“The $80 million was approved, paid for, and then rescinded, all while our city spent more than $7 billion of our own funds over the last three years,” Adams said last month. 

New York City mounted its own lawsuit to claw back the $80 million in February.