Did New York City announce it would stop providing all food assistance to migrants? No, that's not true: The city announced that it would stop giving prepaid debit cards to migrants to buy their own food. Instead it will return to delivering boxed meals to migrants staying at hotels, a City Hall spokesman told Lead Stories.
The claim was implied by a post (archived here) on Instagram on November 7, 2024. The post included a news clip about the end of the debit card program and read:
Eric Adams must've been like 'Trump gonna send them back anyway, so F um.' LMAO!!
This is what the post looked like on social media at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Nov 8 07:09:55 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories reached out to the Office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams to ask about the claim.
Spokesman William Fowler said the city would not renew the contract it had for the prepaid cards. At the end of the current contract period, which ends in January 2025, the city will go back to delivering boxed meals to migrants staying at hotels. In an email, dated November 8, 2024, Fowler wrote:
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. 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.
Adams spoke to ABC 7 (archived here) about the end of the program, making clear it's not an end to all food assistance. He said:
Now we have moved away from emergency response because we have had a constant decrease in our population -- and now we're going to the procurement process that we do now for food.
Adams was apparently referring to the migrant population in New York City, which Fowler says has been decreasing. Still, hundreds of new arrivals come every week.
"It was an emergency and now we're moving in another direction," Adams said.
