State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

City Officials Go To Court To Protect New Yorkers With Municipal IDs

NPR: When New York City launched the nation's largest municipal ID program, advocates said it would give immigrants in the country illegally access to bank accounts and city services.

"They could go visit a loved one in the hospital, they could go visit their child's teacher," Mayor Bill De Blasio said at a press conference earlier this month. "If they had an interaction with a police officer, there was an ID recognized by the NYPD. It was a very basic concept."

By most metrics, the IDNYC card has been a resounding success. New York City has issued roughly 900,000 ID cards since last year. No one knows exactly how many IDNYC cardholders are in the country illegally, although the number is probably in the hundreds of thousands. But now, with President-Elect Donald Trump coming to power, there are concerns that the program could backfire.

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