USDA Secretary Says SNAP Will Be Drastically Reformed After Thousands of Illegals Removed

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend” thousands of illegal migrants have been taken off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and that there will be drastic reform to ensure those who are truly vulnerable receive benefits.

Concerns about maintaining SNAP benefits began in October 2025 as the government shutdown stretched out. Notably, a handful of Democrats sued the Trump administration to use a contingency fund to continue the food aid. Highlighting how the argument over the benefits shed light on who is receiving SNAP, Rollins was asked to discuss reports of illegal immigrants being eligible for SNAP.

“There’s been a lot of miscommunication out there on the program, but this is one of the first things we did. When I walked into Day One of USDA, February 13th, is we sent letters to every governor in America being very clear that no illegal aliens can use SNAP. Zero,” Rollins said. “We asked every state for the first time in history — and this was in February — to send us their data and let us, with DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] and a war room, actually start going through this data to better understand how this explosion of SNAP benefits happened under Joe Biden. We increased almost 40% on this program in just a couple of years under the Biden administration.”

“Since we have asked for that data, 29 states have complied. Of course, almost all the red states, a couple of the blue states too. But in that data — and I haven’t talked about this yet publicly — in that data we have found, we have thousands and thousands of illegal use of the [Electronic Benefit Transfer] EBT card,” Rollins added. “We have been moving people off of SNAP. We’ve got almost 700,000 people I think we’ve moved off just since the president took office. We’ve arrested about 118 people. So this has been ongoing.”

Democrats California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his attorney general, Rob Bonta, announced the state would be joining a handful of other Democrat-led states such as Arizona and Massachusetts in suing the Trump administration for alleged “unlawful refusal” of SNAP benefits.

The U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) posted a notice Monday that SNAP benefits will be paused starting Nov. 1, while calling out Democrats who keep voting for the government shutdown to continue. The USDA announcement reportedly follows a memo stating the agency would not use $5 billion in contingency funds to pay for SNAP benefits, as those funds are “not legally available” for that purpose, according to Reuters.

Read More: https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2025/11/02/agriculture-department-brooke-rollins-illegal-immigrants-snap-food-benefits-reform-fox-friends-weekend/