I want to share some news with you.

After careful review, my office declined to approve a no-bid $432 million City contract with a company that is supposed to provide shelter, social services, and legal services to new arrivals. 

The City’s deal with DocGo, the vendor company in question, raised many red flags. 

First and foremost, DocGo is a medical services company, NOT a housing, social services, or legal services provider — the very services the contract would have the company provide. 

There are many alarming and adverse news articles detailing DocGo’s bad behavior. This includes inflating its financial value, interfering with law enforcement, and workplace violations. 

What’s more, the company explicitly stated that they want to leverage this contract with the City of New York to get into the business of migrant services, raising all sorts of questions about their experience and motivation. In fact, the DocGo CEO seems eager to capitalize on the fact that the longer asylum seekers remain in DocGo’s care, the more the company’s revenue will grow. 

Another concern is that $432 million is a lot of money — and we simply don’t have enough information about whether the contract is actually worth that much. Vendor selection, even in an emergency, should be as competitive as possible, but we also don’t really know how the City selected DocGo instead of other companies.  

With all of this in mind, the Office of the Comptroller returned the contract to the City. If there are answers to the questions raised by this decision, as outlined in my letter to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, New Yorkers deserve to hear them. 

To be clear, untangling the humanitarian crisis of assisting hundreds of daily new arrivals requires teamwork, compassion, and urgency. New York is required to provide emergency shelter for new arrivals, and after months of advocacy by my office and others, is also providing legal services to help people file for asylum and work authorization (which we must continue scaling up with state and federal support). 

That’s why the City wants to enter an emergency contract with DocGo to begin with — to increase its capacity to find shelter and provide services for asylum seekers. 

But the job of the Office of the Comptroller is to ensure that City agencies check the integrity of vendors, that procurement rules are followed, that subcontractors are selected appropriately, and that there is enough budget for the contract. And ultimately, our review of the $432 million contract provided very little confidence in DocGo. That is why we returned the contract. 

If this news has piqued your interest, our online asylum seeker resource is tracking all known contracts relating to asylum seekers services. Plus, our award-winning online transparency tool, Checkbook NYC, is a great place to view and track how City government is spending money.  

Thanks for reading. Let’s keep fighting for a more transparent, efficient, and equitable city for everyone — no matter if they’ve been here for decades or years or just a few days. 

Brad