NYC Mayor Eric Adams to stop giving migrants FREE pre-paid cards worth $18,500 a year to migrants over backlash to multi-million scheme

New York City is ending its controversial scheme that gave migrant families prepaid debit cards worth a total of $18,500 each.

City Hall made the announcement Thursday, as Mayor Eric Adams has finally listened to critics of the Big Apple’s migrant policies and Adams himself has grown friendlier with Donald Trump, who is planning massive reforms to the immigration system.

William Fowler, a spokesman for City Hall, said the program will expire at the end of the year after a total of $3.2 million in cash value has been distributed to 2,600 families to purchase necessities.

The debit cards could only be used at grocery stores and bodegas, Adams said when it started. A family of four with two children can receive up to $350 per week, depending on the age of the children.

The program became more troublesome after Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, stripped Adams of the power to make “emergency deals” with companies like MoCaFi, which got $400,000 in a no-bid contract to run the program.

“We will continue to implement and learn from innovative pilot programs like the immediate response card program as we welcome hundreds of newcomers each week,” Fowler said in a statement.

However, Fowler did tell Gothamist the program could potentially be restarted but would have to go through an open bidding process to determine who would run it.

Critics, including Adams’ rival on the migrant crisis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Queens-born rapper 50 Cent, have questioned why migrants are more likely to be dealt the cards than struggling New Yorkers.

Abbott branded the “offensive” plan as “madness” but supporters say it will help the city cope with pressure on its services caused by a surge of migrants in recent months.

Adams insisted that the debit cards would save the city $600,000 a month, or $7.2 million a year, by allowing migrants to spend money that goes back into the local economy, instead of the city spending money on boxes of food.

Meanwhile, 50 Cent shared a post on Instagram about the plan to hand out prepaid cards to migrants to purchase food and baby supplies.

“WTF Mayor Adams is calling my phone,” he wrote. ‘I don’t understand how this works, can someone explain this. I’m stuck, maybe TRUMP is the answer.”

It comes after the artist, born in New York City, questioned why migrants were given free health care in California.

Joseph Borelli, the council’s Republican minority leader, acknowledged there would be savings but questioned the amount spent on migrants.

“Many New Yorkers will view this as something that is fundamentally unfair,” he told the paper New York Times. “There are plenty of New Yorkers struggling to pay their bills.”

Trump is expected to crack down on illegal immigration and try to limit legal immigration when he returns to the White House on January 20, following up on campaign promises and unfinished efforts from his 2017-2021 presidency.

He has pledged to launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, focusing on criminals but aiming to send millions back to their home countries, an effort that is expected to tap U.S. government resources but also will face obstacles.

Trump has said he would reinstate his 2019 “Remain in Mexico” program, which forced asylum seekers of certain nationalities trying to enter the US at the southern border to wait in Mexico for their cases to be resolved.

The program was ended by Democratic President Joe Biden, who ended his faltering re-election campaign in July, making Vice President Kamala Harris the nominee.

Trump would also reinstate the COVID-19-era Title 42 policy, which allowed U.S. border authorities to quickly expel migrants back to Mexico without the chance to seek asylum, he told Time Magazine in an interview.

He would use record numbers of border crossings and the trafficking of fentanyl and children as reasons for the emergency measures, Time reported, citing comments from advisers.

Trump has said he will try to detain all migrants caught crossing the border illegally or violating other immigration laws, ending what he calls “catch and release.”

At a campaign event earlier this month, Trump said he would call on Congress to fund an additional 10,000 Border Patrol agents, a significant increase over the existing force.

Harris criticized Trump for helping to bypass a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year that could have added 1,300 more agents.

Trump focused on building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border during his first term and has promised to close holes in the border wall if elected.

He criticized a Biden asylum ban implemented last June and vowed to reverse it at a campaign event in Arizona.

Trump said the measure would not adequately secure the border, even though it reflected Trump-era policies to deter would-be migrants and has contributed to a sharp decline in the number of migrants caught crossing illegally.

He also said at the campaign event that he would consider using tariffs to pressure China and other countries to prevent migrants from their countries from coming to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump’s running mate JD Vance said in a New York Times interview published in October that deporting 1 million immigrants a year would be “reasonable.”

He has said he would implement travel bans on people from certain countries or with certain ideologies, building on a policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

Trump previewed some parts of the world that could be subject to a renewed travel ban in an October 2023 speech, promising people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and “anywhere our security is threatened” to limit.

The president-elect said last year he would seek to end automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of immigrants living in the country illegally, an idea he flirted with as president.

Trump said last June that he would try to prevent communists, Marxists and socialists from entering the US

Adams, who has become the much-maligned face of the migrant disaster in New York City, has recently become friendlier to Trump, even before his victory on Tuesday.

The Democratic mayor of New York City has condemned the party’s harsh rhetoric against Trump.

The mayor congratulated Trump on his victory and said he spoke privately with the newly elected president on Wednesday.

“I communicated with the president yesterday to say that there are many issues here in the city that we want to tackle together with the government. The city must move forward and that is our call.’

Both Adams and Trump have sympathized with each other’s legal troubles in the past.

Trump defended Adams at the Al Smith Charity Dinner — which Harris skipped — when he mentioned the mayor’s federal indictment for bribery, fraud and soliciting foreign campaign donations.