The city of New York is stopping a program that gave prepaid debit cards to immigrant families who lived in the “sanctuary city.”
Adams told FOX 5 New York that the pilot program for quick response cards was over in a statement.
“Through the immediate response cards pilot program, we were able to reduce food waste, redirect millions of dollars to our local economy, and provide more culturally relevant food to more than 2,600 migrant families in our care,” said Adams. “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.”
Early this year, New York City started giving prepaid bank cards to immigrant families living in the city. As part of the city’s Immediate Response Cards (IRC) scheme, the first prepaid cards were given out in March. They should only be used to buy necessities like food.
The mayor’s office had said before that the program was only open to people in a different program that gives families with children and families expecting children four-week hotel stays.
In the city, illegal immigrants are given weekly allowances until the end of their four-week hotel stays. Each week, families of four with two children under five years old can get up to $350.
It was said that the program would help the city save $7.2 million a year, or $600,000 a month.
Since 2022, more than 200,000 migrants have come to New York City, which has been swamped. Since then, the city has been giving migrants places to live. It opened a re-ticketing office last year to help migrants get one-way plane tickets.
Bloomberg News was the first to report that 4,500 refugees had been sent back to Texas on buses or planes paid for by the city. Fox News later confirmed this.
The office of Mayor Eric Adams says that the top five places people leave New York City for are Texas, Illinois, Florida, New York State, and Colorado.
They’ve given out more than 47,000 tickets so far, and about 4,500 of them have gone to Texas. It wasn’t clear how many of those refugees came from buses that left Texas and went to New York City.
In 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started sending migrants by bus to New York City and other “sanctuary cities.” He said this was to help the border communities that were already under a lot of stress.
Abbott said he chose “sanctuary cities,” which are places that don’t work with federal immigration police, because he thought they made the problem worse.
Source: NYC ends taxpayer-funded prepaid debit card program for illegal immigrants
