The Trump administration said Tuesday that it had fired four employees from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including the agency’s chief financial officer, over their roles in disbursing federal funds to house migrants in New York City hotels.

The firings capped a startling chain of events that began Monday with an early-morning social media post by Elon Musk who claimed, misleadingly, that FEMA had recently sent $59 million meant for disaster relief to New York City to pay for “high end hotels” for migrants, and who called the expenditure unlawful.

New York City officials raced to clarify that the federal money had been properly allocated by FEMA under President Joe Biden last year, adding that it was not a disaster relief grant and had not been spent on luxury hotels.

Nonetheless, just two hours after Musk’s post, FEMA’s acting director, Cameron Hamilton, announced that the payments in question “have all been suspended” — even though most of the money had already been disbursed — and that “personnel will be held accountable.”

By Tuesday morning, roughly 24 hours after Musk’s post, the Trump administration had followed through on one part of its pledge.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, said that the four employees had been terminated “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants.”

McLaughlin did not specify how the employees had undermined leadership, or how making payments previously appropriated by Congress amounted to unilateral conduct. But she said that those fired included two program analysts, a grant specialist and the agency’s chief financial officer, Mary Comans, whom FEMA’s website identifies as a “longtime public servant.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, D.H.S. will not sit idly and allow deep-state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people,” McLaughlin said in her statement, referring to the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.

The swift firings underscored Musk’s growing influence over the federal government as the Trump administration moves to slash government spending and reshape the federal bureaucracy, purging civil servants along the way. Coman’s firing also appeared to rid FEMA, an agency that Trump and Noem have suggested should be eliminated, of the person responsible for managing its $33 billion budget, which helps finance the government’s response to natural disasters.

It remains unclear if the Trump administration will move to claw back federal money that was appropriated by Congress under Biden to help New York City respond to the more than 230,000 migrants who have arrived there since 2022. Despite the public pronouncements, Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for City Hall, said that the city had not been informed about any pause in funding.

Musk said that the payment of congressionally appropriated funds to the city, which he said was “discovered” by his government efficiency team, was unlawful and “in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”

He appeared to be referring to an order Trump issued on Jan. 20 that directed the homeland security secretary to review and pause distribution of federal funding to nongovernmental organizations providing services to “removable or illegal aliens.” It is unclear how the order would apply to payments made to the New York City government.