Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur who teamed with Elon Musk on President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has blasted New York City’s $220 million agreement to use the historic Roosevelt Hotel for $220 million as a processing center and shelter for illegal immigrants.
In a posting on X, Ramaswamy criticized the June 2023 pact between the city government and Pakistan International Airlines, which owns the hotel, which involves leasing the property for $210 per room per night for its 1,025 rooms.
“A taxpayer-funded hotel for illegal migrants is owned by the Pakistani government, which means NYC taxpayers are effectively paying a foreign government to house illegals in our own country,” said Ramaswamy on X, responding to a post on the topic by former investment banker turned author John Lefevre. “This is nuts.”
Musk replied to Ramaswamy’s tweet with a single word response: “Crazy.”
The Roosevelt Hotel opened in 1924 and was named in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt. Located adjacent to Grand Central Station, it was one of the city’s most popular hotels – for decades, the hotel was the center of year-end national attention when bandleader Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians would broadcast their annual New Year’s Eve concert from the hotel’s Roosevelt Grill, and more recently it was a location for the popular “Mad Men” television series. It was shuttered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, it is unclear what role the new DOGE can have in disrupting the contract between the hotel and the city government. The contract runs through 2026 and the Pakistani government has contracted the brokerage JLL as the exclusive agent to market the property to developers and investors.
Photo by Billy Hathorn / Wikimedia Commons
But it’s ok to privatize prisons to house and detention camps for the wealthy? That’s still paid for by taxpayers. You just want kickback and control and Pakistani Airline beat you to it. Save the faux hypocritical outrage.
BITTER DEFEATED DEMOCRATS!!
In 7 weeks Trump will take over and start rounding up thousands and thousands illegal immigrants! ICE will invade that Hotel and drag all those ILLEGAL ALIENS OUT!!!
Trump will get rid of all these Sanctuary City policies, and this Circus caused by Biden and LOSER KAMALA WILL END!!!
NO MORE ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO OUR COUNTRY!!!
10 million of these people”people” have been allowed to walk in!!
TAKE SOME TO KAMALA’s house, BIDENS HOUSE, just drop them
Off in front of their front door!!
TRUMP!! Yes!! VIVECK!! Yes!!
I agree with Vivek. This is insanity. Anybody that’s illegal should not be housed here illegally while we pay for it out of our hard earned taxes.
Anybody wanting to come into the country legally, should get the correct paperwork to come in legally. Period.
Illegal aliens, think about that term?, they violated our nations borders, illegally came into our country. They should be immediately sent home to their countries. It would be cheaper than trying to put the billions and billions into housing, feeding, taking care of their medical, education, etc. and instead – focus on our elderly and our veterans.
Whelp…it shouldn’t be very hard for ICE to come in after Trump takes office and surround the building one night, then deport them all. Let it fill up again with illegals, rinse and repeat.
I agree with Brian. We should focus this money on our poverty stricken homeless citizen elderly and our veterans instead of supporting Illegal immigrants who, by the very definition, are criminals.
I’m just hoping Vivek and Elon can really go beyond pointing out these outrageous ways to spend taxpayer money on ILLEGAL aliens and other CRIMINAL activities. Cutting waste in government at any level benefits the taxpayer.
The waste of money by our governments is unbelievable, because they aren’t spending their own money… they spend our hard-earned money that was taxed away from us.
Biden just sent $1 Billion dollars to a country in Africa that was flooded. Yet, we have U.S. citizens in North Carolina not getting help. Of course, if Biden gives a billion dollars to a country in Africa, $10-20 million of it can easily be kicked back into an international bank account somewhere for Biden’s family.
The election was just the beginning, like D Day. The Democrat Party will not just lay down-they are Marxists. They will continue their ultra-corruption and destruction of America and Western Civilization. We need Nuremberg-style tribunals for the Democrats and half of the Republicans in Washington. From Covid to pedophilia to open borders to endless wars to Laken Riley to Western NC, they have inflicted death and suffering on Americans and the world. America has the same problem with the Democrats in 1865. The hammer of justice needs to fall heavily on the Democrat party and half of the Republicans.
Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.
‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all.
We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.’
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
I have to agree with Vivek. We taxpayers are paying for illegal aliens that have no right to take yours and my tax dollars to be housed in posh hotels while the rest of us are struggling to pay our heating. A prime example to the former Border Czar” as to why she will not have a job after Jan. 20.
I have to agree with Vivek. We taxpayers are paying for illegal aliens that have no right to take yours and my tax dollars to be housed in posh hotels while the rest of us are struggling to pay our heating bill. A prime example to the former “Border Czar” as to why she will not have a job after Jan. 20.
And slowly we become 1936 Germany. Manifest Destiny, the mantra that ‘allowed’ us to practice genocide on seventy million native Americans. Who among us has ‘pure’ blood/
Give us your tired and poor is no longer the dream of what America was all about.