When Julliana Samson signed up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help afford food as she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, she had to turn in extensive, detailed personal information to the state to qualify.
Now she's worried about how that information could be used.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made an unprecedented demand to states to share the personal information of tens of millions of federal food assistance recipients by July 30, as a federal lawsuit seeks to postpone the data collection.
USDA is requiring states turn over identifying information on all SNAP recipients and applicants since 2020, "including but not limited to" names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers, as well as the dollar amount each recipient received over time. States that do not comply with USDA's data demand could lose funds.
Samson is one of the more than 40 million people who receive SNAP benefits each month. Their personal data has remained within their states' control, but the USDA's demand would change that.
She and three other SNAP recipients, along with a privacy organization and an anti-hunger group, are challenging USDA's data demand in a federal lawsuit, arguing the agency has not followed protocols required by federal privacy laws. Late Thursday, they asked a federal judge to intervene to postpone the July 30 deadline and a hearing has been scheduled for July 23.
"I am worried my personal information will be used for things I never intended or consented to," Samson wrote recently as part of an ongoing public comment period for the USDA's plan. "I am also worried that the data will be used to remove benefits access from student activists who have views the administration does not agree with."
Some senators share her concern. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday, 13 Democratic senators, led by California's Sen. Adam Schiff, slammed a public notice the USDA issued that grants itself broad authority for using SNAP recipients' data.
"This policy would turn a program that feeds millions of Americans into a tool of government mass surveillance," the senators wrote. They called on the agency to reverse course and warned otherwise the USDA "will be at serious risk of violating federal law."
When asked for comment on the senators' letter, an unnamed USDA spokesperson responding from a media email account wrote the agency's public notice for its proposed SNAP database "is open for comment until July 23."
Data and deportation efforts
The USDA's sweeping data demand comes as the Trump administration is taking wide-ranging and novel steps to collect personal data on people living in the U.S. and link data sets across government agencies for immigration enforcement, identifying potential fraud and waste, and other purposes that are still unknown.
A new federal agreement, for example, allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access Medicaid recipients' personal information, including ethnicities and addresses, to locate immigrants who might be subject to deportation. The agreement, which was first reported by the Associated Press and was later confirmed by the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, on CBS, follows the revelation that federal health officials shared Medicaid enrollees' data from a handful of states with the Department of Homeland Security without notifying states or seeking consent.
The USDA first publicized its data request in early May, saying the information would be used to ensure program integrity. The agency cited President Trump's March 20 executive order that calls for "unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding" including from "third-party databases" to stop waste, fraud and abuse.
The agency has since stated the plan also relates to Trump's February 19 executive order aimed at ensuring immigrants without legal status do not receive public benefits, and has said it will use the data to verify enrollees' immigration status. Some categories of noncitizens who used to qualify for SNAP no longer do after Trump's tax and spending bill that passed earlier this month.
Though immigrants living in the country without legal status are ineligible for SNAP, they can apply for benefits for their U.S. citizen children.
NPR asked USDA if the agency would make SNAP recipient data available to ICE for immigration enforcement.
In response, an unnamed USDA spokesperson referred to a provision of the Food and Nutrition Act, the federal law that created SNAP, that says information shall be shared with local, state or federal law enforcement to investigate SNAP-related violations.
A legal debate over privacy protocols
The USDA temporarily paused its data request in late May after the federal lawsuit challenging it was initially filed. The agency then issued a Systems of Record Notice, or SORN, on June 23 for the proposed new data set, a step required by the federal Privacy Act of 1974 that allows the public to comment on the agency's plan.
Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit submitted public comments and argued in court filings that the USDA's notice is unlawful, since they say the agency's description for how it intends to use SNAP recipients' data is incompatible with the Food and Nutrition Act that created the food assistance program.
The USDA's notice asserts broad authority to share SNAP recipients' data with other agencies and law enforcement. But the law that created SNAP says records shall be shared with law enforcement only to investigate SNAP-related violations, with an exception for locating fugitives.
"Congress, when they were passing the Food and Nutrition Act, understood how sensitive this information is," Nicole Schneidman, a technology policy strategist at the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy, and one of the attorneys behind the lawsuit, told NPR. "And the bottom line is that this administration can't attempt to basically override that by issuing this overbroad SORN."
Samson, one of the plaintiffs, wrote in her public comment that the federal government is proposing to use her data in ways that she never consented to when she signed up.
"I shared my sensitive information with California with a clear understanding that it was only to determine my eligibility for SNAP and make sure I didn't break any of the rules of being on SNAP," she wrote in her public comment. "Now, this notice from the federal government says they plan to share my data with other federal agencies for reasons that have nothing to do with finding errors and fraud in the SNAP program. I never agreed to that, and it scares me."
She and other plaintiffs in the case argue the notice is defective because it does not spell out the full extent of the data the agency intends to collect.
Another plaintiff, Catherine Hollingsworth, a 76-year-old SNAP recipient in Alaska, wrote in her comment that she has shared extensive personal information with the state, including scans of IDs, medical records and bank information, and she wondered if the federal government might ultimately get those records, too.
"I am very worried that with each additional data transfer data [sic], it will be less secure and that my information will be severely compromised," she wrote.
An unnamed USDA spokesperson told NPR the agency does not comment on litigation, and referred to the Department of Justice, which did not return a request for comment.
States deciding how to respond
Earlier this month, USDA announced its data collection would begin July 24, the day after the comment period for its SORN is slated to close.
Plaintiffs argue the USDA's timeline has not left any time to consider public comments and incorporate feedback.
While several states have indicated they plan to comply with USDA's demand, others have expressed concerns.
"We will protect Marylanders' personal information by following the law," Maryland Department of Human Services press secretary Lilly Price told NPR in an email. "We are currently reviewing the USDA letter."
The lawsuit over the SNAP data collection is one of more than a dozen lawsuits pending over the Trump administration's efforts to access and aggregate Americans' sensitive data.
Last week, twenty states sued over the Medicaid data disclosure to DHS.
In response to an NPR inquiry about the agreement to share Medicaid data with ICE, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a statement, "With respect to the recent data sharing between CMS and DHS, HHS acted entirely within its legal authority – and in full compliance with all applicable laws – to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them."
The statement went on to criticize California for offering health benefits to immigrants without legal status through a state-run program.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat who is leading the lawsuit to stop the federal government from sharing Medicaid data, said this week he was "deeply disturbed" to learn of the new agreement that gave ICE access to the data.
"The President's efforts to pull personal, private, and unrelated health data to create a mass deportation machine cannot be allowed to continue," Bonta said in a statement.
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