Mayor Adams nixes major perk for some illegal aliens in NYC
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has announced that a program to provide prepaid debit cards to thousands of illegal aliens will soon come to a close.
At the start of the year, the city began implementing the pilot program, which provided prepaid debit cards to a fraction of the estimated 60,000 migrants living in its shelters.
‘A total amount not to exceed $53 [million] … in accordance with the scope of services and fees.’
City officials initially defended the program, claiming it would cut costs in comparison to the boxed-meal service migrants had been receiving and permitted migrants to purchase food that they prefer or that better suited their dietary restrictions. It also allowed them to buy baby supplies as needed.
The amount migrants have received varies, but a family of four with two young children has typically received about $350 per week. Since the program began, about 2,600 migrants living at the Roosevelt Hotel have been given a total of about $3.2 million, a figure that officials believe is about half the cost of the boxed-meal service.
However, critics raised red flags about the program almost from the moment it came to light.
For one thing, it is unclear whether the purchases made on the cards have ever been monitored. While the cards reportedly work only at grocery stores, convenience stores, and bodegas, they may still have been spent on items unrelated to food and other necessities, though recipients were required to sign an affidavit promising to use them only for their intended purpose.
Moreover, such prepaid debit cards have not been offered to the homeless and other poor American citizens living in the city, prompting New York Council member Joseph Borelli to describe the program as “fundamentally unfair.” He and other Republicans on the council argued that the debit cards incentivized more illegal aliens to relocate to NYC.
Though it was billed as a cost-saving measure, the program also came as the result of a one-year, “emergency,” no-bid contract with New Jersey-based tech startup Mobility Capital Finance. The truncated process meant no competing offers and little time for thorough consideration.
City Comptroller Brad Lander has since revoked the city’s ability to enter into such emergency, no-bid contracts for services for migrants.
The overall cost of the program has also been obscured. While some reports indicate that MoCaFi receives only $400,000 for its services, the New York Post claimed back in February that the contract itself showed MoCaFi would receive “a total amount not to exceed $53 [million] … in accordance with the scope of services and fees” and that the $53 million sum did NOT include the money loaded onto the debit cards.
Despite these concerns, the city council announced in July that it would expand the program. Now, with the contract about to expire at the end of the year, Adams has reversed course and decided not to renew it.
“As we move towards more competitive contracting for asylum seeker programs, we have chosen not to renew the emergency contract for this pilot program once the one-year term concludes,” Adams said in a statement, WABC-TV reported Thursday.
Adams did not explain further why the program had been nixed. However, City Hall spokesperson William Fowler insisted that concerns about possible waste, fraud, and abuse never came to pass, Gothamist reported.
“We will continue to implement and learn from innovative pilot programs like the immediate response cards program as we care for hundreds of new arrivals every week,” Fowler said.
The announcement regarding the demise of the program comes just days after former President Donald Trump, who campaigned heavily on securing the border and deporting the millions of illegal immigrants who entered the country under the Biden-Harris administration, decisively beat Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
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