“Blakeman: New York spends "an estimated $8 billion in taxpayer money" on services for people in the country illegally, "roughly $81,000 in benefits per person"”
The state number is far smaller than $8 billion. The Comptroller's Asylum Seeker Spending Report, updated through June 30, 2026, says the SFY 2027 Enacted Budget Financial Plan plans $3.9 billion in state emergency asylum-seeker spending across five fiscal years (SFY 2023-SFY 2027), and that actual state spending totaled $2.68 billion through June 30, 2026. The FY 2027 Enacted Budget added no new appropriations. A figure near $8 billion appears only if you use New York City's cumulative expenditures ($1.47B FY23 + $3.75B FY24 + $3.02B FY25 + $1.27B FY26 = $9.51B) - city dollars, not state dollars, and spent over four fiscal years. The spending also covers people seeking asylum, a lawful process, not a category equivalent to "in the country illegally." The $81,000-per-person figure has no published basis in the Comptroller's data, which reports spending by agency and activity, not per capita.