NY Mayor Adams: City won't renew existing contract for migrants' food, shelter, prepaid debit cards

New York Democratic Mayor Adams says the city is ending its contract for taxpayer-funded programs to pay for migrants' food, shelter and and baby supplies – including prepaid debit cards reportedly totaling $3.2 million. 

Adams suggests the pilot program might continue but not under the existing outside contract. 

"As we move toward 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," his office said Thursday.

The city has since late March been providing the debit cards to roughy 2,600 migrant families living in city-funded hotels so that they can buy food and baby supplies, according to local TV station ABC 7 News.

New York, which is consider a so-called "sanctuary city," struggled under the surge in migrants starting in August 2022 when Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott started busing them into the city, in part to make the political argument that border states were unduly shouldering the burden of record migration at the southern U.S. border.