By MAIA COLEMAN NYTimes News Service
Share this story

New York Mayor Eric Adams intends to sue the Trump administration by the end of next week over its clawback of $80 million in federal funding meant to cover the cost of housing migrants in the city, according to a letter from City Hall.

The letter, which was sent to the city comptroller Friday, said the Law Department was in the process of “drafting litigation papers” in an effort to reverse the administration’s clawback of the funds, which were transferred to New York by the Federal Emergency Management Agency this month.

ADVERTISING

Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Adams, said the suit was expected to be filed by Friday. The mayor’s intention to sue was first reported by Politico on Friday.

The decision by Adams to take a legal stand against the Trump administration on an immigration-related issue comes at a critical moment for the mayor, who this past week faced mounting calls to resign after Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon, accused him of trading concessions on immigration policy for the dismissal of the corruption charges against him.

On Monday, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Emil Bove, ordered Manhattan prosecutors to drop the case against Adams.

Bove said the move had nothing to do with the case’s legal strengths, but rather that its prosecution would impede Adams’ ability to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration policies, a highly unusual justification for dropping criminal charges.

The order prompted days of crisis inside the Justice Department, with Sassoon refusing to obey and eventually resigning Thursday, and at least six other prosecutors in New York and Washington following suit.

On Friday night, Bove signed the request asking a judge to dismiss the charges.

Adams has refuted that he traded his authority for an end to his case, but he has struggled to dispel rising fears from New Yorkers that he is indeed cooperating.

On Thursday, the mayor said he would allow federal immigration authorities to operate within the Rikers Island jail complex. And, in a joint appearance on “Fox and Friends” with President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, Friday morning, he described his support for working with the White House to deport immigrants accused of committing crimes.

At one point, Homan said he would make sure Adams complied. If not, he said: “I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”

Adams’ willingness to sue the federal government amid his ongoing legal saga raises questions about the lengths to which he is willing to go to enforce Trump’s immigration agenda. But it also underscores the drastic nature of the administration’s $80 million clawback, which appears to be one of the first known cases in which the administration has seized back congressionally appropriated funds from a locality.

The lawsuit is the latest development in a fight over FEMA’s funding to shelter migrants, which has played out amid Adams’ legal drama.

On Monday, Elon Musk wrote a misleading post on his social platform X claiming that FEMA had sent $59 million intended for disaster relief to New York City to pay for luxury hotels to house migrants. That claim is not accurate; the funds were appropriated by Congress last year under President Joe Biden and issued by FEMA through grants from its Shelter and Services Program, which does not support disaster relief. The city has also stressed that it is not paying luxury hotel rates.

A few hours after Musk’s post, however, FEMA’s acting director, Cameron Hamilton, announced that the payments in question had been suspended and Tuesday, the administration announced the firing of four agency employees involved in distributing the money. A federal judge has since ruled that FEMA is allowed to seek a pause in the funding, though the abrupt clawback of the funds appears to be atypical.

On Wednesday morning, city leaders said they noticed that the $80 million in FEMA funds had suddenly disappeared from city accounts. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, later confirmed that it had taken the money back.

The city was also charged a $15,000 overdraft fee because of the loss of funds, according to Garcia, though the fee was later waived, she said.

The clawback of congressionally appropriated funds has shocked city officials, who this past week questioned the legality of the move and urged the mayor to take a stand against Trump.

Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller who is running in June’s Democratic mayoral primary, sent a letter to the Law Department on Friday calling on Adams to pursue “aggressive legal action” against Trump over the clawback and offering to do so himself if the mayor “would prefer to spend his days advancing President Trump’s agenda instead of fighting for New Yorkers.”

In the Law Department’s response announcing its intention to sue, it declined Lander’s offer for external legal counsel. The mayor’s office said separately that Lander was not involved in the department’s decision.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company