Inside Mayor Adams’ Migrant Debit Card Boondoggle — No-Bid Bank Gets $50 Million, Border Crossers up to $10,000 Each

Editor’s note: After this column was published, the city’s Housing Preservation & Development, which had failed to respond to questions for days, reached out to The Post. The agency’s primary objection is that it claims the $53 million contract includes the money given to migrants and not just the fees for Mobility Capital. Though the contract itself includes fee provisions for spending more than $150 million (far above what HPD claims will be spent) the column has been updated to reflect HPD’s comments.

It takes money to make money, as the old saying goes, and, apparently, it also takes money — as much as $53 million — to give money away.

Earlier this month, The Post broke the story that Mayor Adams is giving out pre-paid cash cards to migrants.

Unusually for the mayor, Adams didn’t publicize this story himself, and his administration has for nearly a month failed to correct several public misperceptions about it.

One misperception is that the program allows the city to give out just $50 million to migrants.

No wonder the mayor has been reticent.

This debit-card program — if you read the actual contract — has the potential to become an open-ended, multi-billion-dollar Bermuda Triangle of disappearing, untraceable cash, used for any purpose.

It will give migrants up to $10,000 each in taxpayer money with no ID check, no restrictions and no fraud control.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post

______________________

Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.

Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit