Gooder and harder
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They’ve voted for this repeatedly and they continue to do so; what’s the beef?
Migrants signing up for NYC ID cards in record numbers with more than 112K awarded in 2023
A record number of migrants are taking their first step to becoming residents of New York City by signing up for IDNYC cards, The Post has learned.
The municipal card — part of the largest such program in the US and launched in 2015 by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio — can be used as personal identification and verification to obtain local services ranging from health care and school enrollment for kids to use of the public library and for employment and some financial transactions.
The number of new IDNYC cards issued soared nearly 50% from last year to 2023: with 82,085 given out between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, 2022, and 112,238 in the same period this year — coinciding with the wave of asylum-seekers entering the city, according to data obtained by The Post.
People can obtain the card regardless of immigration status — so that includes asylum-seekers and others who came here illegally and lack documentation.
The main Queens Public Library in Jamaica — used as one of the main processing centers for IDNYC applications by the city’s Human Resources Administration — has seen lines of migrants snake around the block in the morning waiting for its doors to open.
“There’ve been lines wrapped around the building — I’ve seen people starting getting here at 3 a.m.,” said Queens LIbrary President and CEO Dennis Walcott.
Mayor Adams regrets his city’s settlement with BLM protesters that now prevents “kettling”.
The NYPD’s controversial settlement agreement in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations is “troubling” and has made officers “hesitant” when responding to large, out-of-control marches, Mayor Eric Adams warned Tuesday — as the Big Apple has been rocked by fiery anti-Israel protests.
The department agreed to abandon “kettling” — the crowd-control tactic of herding and confining protesters to a small area before making arrests — as part of a settlement announced in September resolving several federal lawsuits claiming officers used excessive force during the George Floyd demonstrations.
But as the city is besieged by angry pro-Palestinian protests — where agitators have been spotted brandishing swastika signs — Adams has sounded the alarm.
“The Police Department … [has] to be extremely more hesitant in actions that they would have carried out in the past to keep the peace,” Hizzoner warned during a Tuesday press conference.
“I did not agree with the concept of those changes,” he continued. “I pushed back hard … I thought it put us on a very troubling direction.”
When asked why he agreed to the settlement if he didn’t like the terms, the mayor said city officials thought the deal might worsen if they didn’t agree.
“As soon as I read [it], I said, ‘This is a problem,’” Adams said. “You know, you have to go by the advice of your attorneys.”
Critics argue kettling can cause tensions to rise.
“It really does create this pressure cooker,” Noam Ostrander, a professor at DePaul University who has studied violence in Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune of the tactic.
“You have a lot of people that get confined to a small space, you have people charging towards you, batons flying and ramming bikes into people and shields into people.”
He also argued that the practice is “constitutionally questionable.”
“People are being detained without being told they’re being detained,” he told the publication.
You can read here about the madman who stabbed two teenaged girls in Grand Central two weeks after being released after committing a similar crime. But the judge did order him to be :monitored”, so there’s that.
