Trump administration threatens to withhold SNAP benefits from blue states over immigration data

The Trump administration indicated Tuesday that it would begin withholding SNAP will benefit beneficiaries in most Democratic-led states starting next week, after those states refused to provide the Agriculture Department with data including recipient names and immigration statuses.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that 29 Republican-led states have complied, but 21 States including California, New York and Minnesota declined to provide data requested in February. Rollins said his department requested the information to “eliminate…fraud.”

“So, starting next week, we have begun and will begin to stop moving federal funds to these states, until they comply and they tell us and allow us to partner with them to root out this fraud and protect the American taxpayer,” Rollins said during the White House meeting.

Nearly 42 million people in the United States receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Responding to Rollins’ remarks on Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on X: “Real question: Why is the Trump administration so determined that people will go hungry?”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called Rollins’ remarks an attempt to “punish…his political rivals.”

“It is simply ridiculous that the Trump administration is once again attempting to withhold SNAP funding for data sharing after a court clearly barred it from doing so,” Ellison said in a statement.

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia sued the administration to block the data requirement this year. The attorneys general argued that the request was part of a campaign by the Trump administration to “hoard Americans’ sensitive personal data and misuse it for unauthorized purposes,” citing agreements made by the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services to share data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction in October blocking the administration from denying federal SNAP funding to states that refuse to provide requested data. The Agriculture Department can appeal the decision and has until Dec. 15 to decide whether to do so — but the judge has already rejected a request from the administration to stay the injunction if it decides to appeal.

SNAP funding expired last month during the longest government shutdown ever, forcing many recipients to go without food. The shutdown ended Nov. 12, essentially ending a legal challenge that reached the Supreme Court over the legality of the administration’s attempt to deny funding.