We are committed to upholding Secretary of Agriculture Rollins’ priority to take swift action to minimize instances of fraud, waste, and program abuse, and to ensure American taxpayer dollars are spent with integrity and accountability. We are issuing this memo, both in support of that priority and in response to requests from SNAP state agencies and FDPIR administering agencies, for additional guidance on preventing dual participation and ensuring comparable disqualifications are applied in SNAP and FDPIR.
On March 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14243, Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos. Among myriad important directives, this Executive Order required agency heads to “take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure the Federal Government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases.”
To ensure that tax dollars do not fund SNAP benefits to illegal aliens or other ineligible aliens, State agencies should carefully examine their identity and immigration status verification practices and make necessary enhancements.
This collection is for providing SNAP households advance or concurrent notice of state agency action to store unused SNAP benefits offline due to three or more months of account inactivity and for those households to seek reinstatement of benefits prior to permanent expungement. Additionally, this collection is for providing SNAP households advance or concurrent notice prior to the state agency expunging unused SNAP benefits from the household's Electronic Benefit Transfer account due to nine months of account inactivity.
Generally speaking, immigration status has changed recently for many aliens and state agencies are encouraged to continuously verify immigration status of all aliens in the state who receive SNAP.
This memorandum reiterates these fundamental objectives and their interaction with the Secretary of Agriculture’s authority to grant state SNAP agencies requests to waive the time limit on receiving SNAP benefits by ABAWDs who do not meet statutory work requirements.
The March 25, 2025, notice issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security entitled “Termination of Parole Processes: Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans” terminates the categorical parole programs established in 2022 and 2023 for aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and their immediate family members (known as “CHNV parole programs”). Parole status for all aliens under the CHNV parole programs will terminate by April 24, 2025, if such status has not already expired before that date.
USDA letter to Governors about SNAP Application Processing Timeliness.
President Trump made it clear in his Executive Order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,” the United States will uphold the national policy articulated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWORA) that “aliens within the Nation’s borders not depend on public resources to meet their needs.”
In the event of a lapse in funding due the expiration of the current continuing resolution on March 15, 2025, state agencies should continue to administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in accordance with federal statutes and regulations, following normal processes and timelines to send issuance files and to issue benefits through the end of April 2025.