NYC Mayor Adams Defends Giving Debit Cards with Cash to Illegal Immigrants, Slams the Press for Reporting

SORKIN: “But one of the things you are doing as an experimental program to provide debit cards with cash on the card. This has created enormous controversy in the city among some taxpayers who say, ‘Why are we paying and giving out this money to these migrants? And isn’t this only going to encourage more migrants to come to New York?’”
Adams: “The reason it has created such controversy is because how it has been reported and distorted. Here’s what we’re doing. We are required to feed migrants and asylum seekers, as well as everyone else in our homeless system. About 40,000 are in the homeless system that are not migrant and asylum seekers. We’re required to feed them. So what I told the team to do is we have to find a way to do it that’s less costly, because we’re on a 30% decrease in cost of the migrant crisis, and that we don’t have food waste. We were able to do that. We’re saving approximately $600,000 a month. $7.2 million a year, by giving individuals a card that allows them to buy food or baby supplies, spending $13 a day on food. That’s cheaper, it’s less food waste. This is a real win-win for us, and the money will go into the local economy because now we’re going to local stores, supermarkets, we’re going to hire local. This is a smart way to bring down the cost and re-place the money back into our city.”