Fact-Checking Misinformation About SNAP
We examined falsehoods about SNAP eligibility and costs and the number of unauthorized immigrants receiving benefits.
As the funding for November food stamp benefits remains in legal limbo and millions of families begin to miss deposits, misinformation around the nation’s largest nutrition assistance program is percolating from the White House and across social media.
President Trump, whose administration secured a temporary reprieve from the Supreme Court on Friday in its quest to avoid fully funding November benefits, has recently complained about bloat in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He has argued, falsely, that his predecessor had doled out benefits to “anybody that would ask.” On social media, users spread false claims that the program overwhelmingly benefited unauthorized immigrants, not Americans.
In fact, the opposite is true. Eligibility is based on income limits, and participants are subject to reporting rules and work requirements. Unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for the program, and the vast majority of recipients, nearly 90 percent, are native-born Americans.
Here’s a fact-check.
What Was Said
“I will say about SNAP benefits, so when I was president, we had $7 billion worth and now they have many times that because these benefits were given to anybody that asked. And they’re up to, I hear, just many times, $47 billion.”
— Mr. Trump, at a breakfast with Republican senators on Wednesday
“Biden went totally crazy, gave it to anybody that would ask, gave it to people that were able-bodied, had no problem.”
— Mr. Trump, at a White House dinner on Thursday
False. None of Mr. Trump’s figures are accurate. Federal spending on SNAP began increasing under Mr. Trump and continued to increase under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but not by “many times.” The Biden administration also did not give benefits to “anybody that asked,” as Mr. Trump said, and the number of people participating actually reached a higher point under Mr. Trump.
SNAP is considered a “countercyclical” program and an “automatic stabilizer to the economy,” according to the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. Enrollment and costs typically track with unemployment and poverty rates, increasing during economic turndowns or recessions and decreasing when the economy expands.
Eligibility is based on financial need — the income limit is broadly 130 percent of the federal poverty line — and beneficiaries are also subject to reporting rules and work requirements. During the coronavirus pandemic, emergency legislation temporarily and partly suspended a longstanding work requirement for “able-bodied” adults without dependents. That occurred in March 2020, under the Trump administration, and the suspension ended in 2023. In fact, the Biden administration agreed to add stricter work requirements to SNAP under a deal with Republican lawmakers in 2023.
Some groups of authorized immigrants, such as refugees and children, qualify for SNAP, while adult green card holders typically must wait five years to become eligible; by law, unauthorized immigrants are ineligible. Those general parameters did not change under the Biden administration. The administration did increase access for some groups — veterans, homeless people and young adults transitioning out of the foster care system — as part of that 2023 deal.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, federal spending on SNAP gradually hovered between $4.5 billion and $5.3 billion a month from February 2017 to March 2020, before spiking to $7.7 billion a month in April as unemployment soared during the pandemic. Participation and benefit amounts increased as emergency legislation temporarily bolstered assistance amounts and waived work requirements. In Mr. Trump’s last month in office, January 2021, the program cost $8.7 billion and enrolled more than 42 million people.
Under Mr. Biden, monthly spending on SNAP hovered between $9 billion and $11 billion from February 2021 to March 2023, when the pandemic-era policy allowing for extra benefits expired. High food inflation and a permanent increase to benefits enacted by the Biden administration in October 2021 also contributed to rising costs.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, argued that Mr. Trump was correct and that SNAP spending had ballooned under the Biden administration. Monthly SNAP costs averaged $5.5 billion from February 2017, Mr. Trump’s first full month in office, to January 2021. That number increased by about 60 percent — a significant amount, but not “many times,” as Mr. Trump had said — to $8.8 billion from February 2021 to January 2025, under Mr. Biden. (In Mr. Trump’s second term, monthly SNAP costs from February 2025 to May 2025, the month with the latest available data, averaged $7.9 billion.)
Monthly SNAP participation averaged 39.5 million people from February 2017 to January 2021 under Mr. Trump, and about 41.7 million from February 2021 to January 2025 under Mr. Biden. But monthly participation was the highest under Mr. Trump, at more than 46 million people in October 2017, as residents in Texas and Florida received emergency food assistance after hurricanes battered those states.
What Was Said
“Fifty-nine percent of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps, meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.”
— Rob Finnerty, Newsmax host, on Oct. 27
False. Nearly 90 percent of SNAP recipients are native-born American citizens and 96 percent were citizens, according to the latest data from the Agriculture Department. Unauthorized immigrants are ineligible for SNAP, and Mr. Finnerty’s claim vastly overstated the number of immigrants participating in the program.
Clips of Mr. Finnerty’s show and its claims have been widely circulated on social media. The false statistic about 59 percent of unauthorized immigrants collecting SNAP benefits has been spread in tens of thousands of posts and viewed millions of times, according to NewsGuard, which tracks online misinformation.
Newsmax did not respond to a request for comment. But Mr. Finnerty appears to be citing and distorting a 2023 analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors lower immigration. The group, which looked at Census Bureau data from 2022, found that 59 percent of households headed by unauthorized immigrants reported using at least one major federal assistance program. That included SNAP, as well as free and reduced-price school lunch, Medicaid and housing assistance, among other programs.
Among some 3.7 million households headed by an unauthorized immigrant, 17 percent participated in SNAP, according to the analysis. (That is compared with 13.9 percent of around 114 million households headed by a U.S.-born citizen.) It is important to note, though, that even that 17 percent includes households with mixed immigration status, such as a family with one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant, one parent who is a native-born citizen and children who are U.S.-born citizens.
According to the Agriculture Department, households with U.S.-born members made up 88.5 percent of all SNAP participants (some 18.9 million households) in 2023 and households with naturalized citizens were 9.5 percent, while some one million noncitizen households made up 4.8 percent of SNAP participants. That last group does include unauthorized immigrants, the report notes, adding that “undocumented individuals are not eligible to receive SNAP benefits, but may be nonparticipating members of SNAP households.”
Linda Qiu is a Times reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade.