Ag secretary wants to kick nonexistent ‘illegal aliens’ from food stamps | Opinion

It’s one thing when fringe elements use misinformation to demonize undocumented immigrants. It’s quite another when the distortions and misinformation are coming from the U.S. government.

On Thursday, the U.S. Agriculture Department sent out a press release touting “Secretary (Brooke) Rollins prevents illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-funded SNAP benefits.”

The problem is – yes, you guessed correctly – that undocumented residents are already prohibited from receiving SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps.

“The generosity of the American taxpayer has long been abused by faulty interpretations of 1996 welfare reform law,” said Rollins in the press release. “Today’s notice makes clear its intent – illegal aliens should not receive government dollars. This effort is one of many by the Department of Agriculture to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse of USDA’s programs and policies.”

If Rollins had only done some research of her department’s policy, she would have learned that undocumented residents are barred from such benefits.

In the USDA website, where SNAP eligibility is explained: “Only U.S. citizens and certain lawfully present non-citizens may receive SNAP benefits. SNAP is not and has never been available to undocumented non-citizens. Non-citizens like tourists and students are generally not eligible.”

Not eligible, according to the website, are refugees, individuals granted asylum, Cuban and Haitian entrants, Hmong or Highland Laotian tribal members, and victims of severe trafficking, among others

This is hardly the first time the government, under President Donald Trump, has created false narrative to sow public anger towards undocumented workers, many of whom are essential to industries such as California agriculture.

When House Republicans were rallying support for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in April, their battle cry was that the Biden administration “was allowing illegals to come into our country, kill our citizens, vote in our elections, undermine our country.”

That was the message from Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican. who must have gotten his information from unreliable sources that one can find anywhere on social media. Republicans said the bill was needed to keep undocumented immigrants from voting.

Trump got into the act of reporting false information. “A lot of these illegal immigrants are coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” he said during a September 2024 presidential debate. “They can’t even speak English, they don’t even know what country they’re in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”

This comes from a man who claimed he won the 2016 popular vote if you deduct three to five million “illegal” votes.

Any scholar of history can tell us that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. The SAVE Act passed in the House but failed in the Senate.

Noncitizen votes in the 2016 general election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “accounted for just 0.0001% of the votes cast.” Of 23.5 million votes, there were only an estimated 30 instances of suspected non-citizen votes.

“It is a solution in search of a problem,” said California Sen. Alex Padilla in May. “Audit after audit, review after review, investigation after investigation, has demonstrated that the instances of ineligible immigrants voting in elections are exceedingly, exceedingly rare, which again, means our current laws are working.”

Why do we bring up this instance of disinformation by the president and his followers? Because it is happening once again.

Rollins borrows from GOP playbook

Lawful permanent residents are eligible for SNAP after a 5-year waiting period. Parents who are undocumented but have SNAP-eligible, U.S.-born children are often hesitant to apply for fear of getting on the federal government’s radar for possible deportation, according to a 2024 Drexel University study.

It seems that Rollins is using the same playbook that Republicans used in getting support for the SAVE Act: Keep saying something you know is incorrect often enough and it converts into the truth. Also, keep targeting undocumented immigrants for doing something they’re not doing (i.e., voting or eating people’s pets) enough times to justify your actions.

Among the 170 executive orders signed by President Donald Trump has signed in his second term is “Ending taxpayer subsidization of open borders” on Feb. 19. “My Administration will uphold the rule of law, defend against the waste of hard-earned taxpayer resources, and protect benefits for American citizens in need, including individuals with disabilities and veterans,” he wrote.

Shame on Rollins for trying to get us to believe that she will kick non-existent undocumented residents from SNAP. We’ve seen this playbook before.