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With millions of people in the United States at risk of losing access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – also known as food stamps – from November 1, a viral chart has claimed to show the majority of the nation’s food stamp recipients are non-white and noncitizens.

The chart, titled Food Stamps by Ethnicity, listed 36 groups of people and said it showed the “percentage of US households receiving SNAP benefits”.

The groups were labelled by nationality, such as “Afghan”, “Somali”, “Iraqi”, along with the racial groups “white”, “Black” and “native”. The chart appeared to show that Afghan people were the largest group receiving SNAP benefits, at 45.6 percent, followed by Somali (42.4 percent) and Iraqi (34.8 percent). White people, represented on the chart with the US flag, were third to last at 8.6 percent.

The federal government shutdown, which started on October 1, is the cause of the looming SNAP funding lapse. SNAP provides food purchasing benefits to low-income households. Conservatives have peddled the misleading narrative that Democrats are pushing for healthcare for undocumented migrants, and people commenting on the chart rehashed a similar talking point.

“Who is getting their EBT cut?” read the caption of an October 25 X post sharing the chart, which had 3.1 million views as of October 27. EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer, which is a SNAP payment system.

“Only 18.7% of EBT or food stamp recipients are American. Let that sink in …” read another post sharing the chart, seemingly mistakenly referring to the figure next to the word “Armenian”; there was no “American” category in the chart. “We are subsidizing foreigners on the taxpayers dime.”

Who is getting their EBT cut pic.twitter.com/el8x9X5iVX

— The General (@1776General_) October 25, 2025

The chart doesn’t show the full picture of SNAP recipients by race or ethnicity. The most reliable source for the breakdown of SNAP recipients by demographics comes from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the programme.

According to the most recent USDA data available, from 2023, white people are the largest racial group receiving SNAP benefits, at 35.4 percent. African Americans are next, making up 25.7 percent of recipients, then Hispanic people at 15.6 percent, Asian people at 3.9 percent, Native Americans at 1.3 percent and multiracial people at 1 percent. The race of 17 percent of participants is unknown.

The same report found that 89.4 percent of SNAP recipients were US-born citizens, meaning less than 11 percent of SNAP participants were foreign-born. Of the latter figure, 6.2 percent were naturalised citizens, 1.1 percent were refugees and 3.3 percent were other noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents and other eligible noncitizens.

While large shares of the groups listed in the chart may receive food stamps, “they are certainly a tiny share of the households and spending on SNAP”, said Tracy Roof, University of Richmond associate professor of political science.

Survey data shows an incomplete picture on SNAP recipients

The chart shared on social media originated from a June blog post from The Personal Finance Wizards, which cited “US Census Table S0201” as its source. The site offers financial advice, but published a disclaimer saying it cannot guarantee the “completeness, accuracy, or reliability” of its information.

The site’s authors appeared to cherry-pick groups to include in the chart, noting, “It’s important to note that the graph highlights a selection of ethnicities we felt would be most relevant and engaging for our audience.” It did not name an author.

In a comment on an Instagram post sharing the chart, Personal Finance Wizards shared a link to the US Census table it used. It shows data from the 2024 American Community Survey, filtered by 49 racial and ethnic groups. The filtered groups don’t completely overlap with the groups in the chart, but the dataset has a column for “households with food stamp/SNAP benefits”, which shows percentages similar to the ones in the chart.

The data does not show what percentage of all SNAP beneficiaries belong to an ethnic or nationality group.

Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research for the food assistance team at the liberal think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the chart appeared to show the shares of households receiving SNAP based on the household respondents’ reported ancestry, which is different from citizenship status.

“Without context, this graphic is misleading and may lead some to conclude that many non-citizens are participating in SNAP, which is not true,” he said.

The American Community Survey allows respondents to self-identify their race. It also defines ancestry as a “person’s ethnic origin or descent, roots or heritage, place of birth, or place of parents’ ancestors before their arrival in the United States”.

Colleen Heflin, Syracuse University expert on food insecurity, nutrition and welfare policy, said the American Community Survey data on SNAP receipts is self-reported, and that question “is known to have a great deal of measurement error” when compared with SNAP administrative data.

Chart reflects higher levels of need in groups with higher shares of SNAP participation

Groups such as Afghans and Iraqis, who are first and third on the chart, would have been more likely to have immediately qualified for the SNAP programme before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s passage because of their special immigration status.

Before the law’s passage, refugees and people who had been granted asylum were also eligible for SNAP without a waiting period. Somalis, who were second on the chart, are “more likely” to qualify based on those criteria, Roof said.

Other noncitizens, such as lawful permanent residents, could be eligible for SNAP only after a five-year waiting period.

But the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the eligibility, making refugees and asylum seekers ineligible. Immigrants in the country illegally are not and have never been eligible for SNAP.

California welfare recipients using state-issued debit cards withdrew more than $1.8 million in taxpayer cash on casino floors between October 2009 and last month, state officials said Thursday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order requiring welfare recipients to promise they will use cash benefits only to “meet the basic subsistence needs” of their families. The order also gave the state Department of Social Services seven days to produce a plan to reduce other types of “waste, fraud and abuse” in the welfare program.

The moves came after The Times reported Wednesday that officials at the department failed to notice for years that welfare recipients could use the state-issued cards to withdraw taxpayer cash at more than half of the tribal casinos and state-licensed poker rooms in California. The state initiated the debit card program in 2002.

Casino withdrawals, which represented far less than 1% of total welfare spending during the eight months for which the department released data, averaged just over $227,392 a month.

Schwarzenegger has already ordered the vendor that runs the state welfare system’s ATM network to prohibit the cards from working at casino machines. Republican lawmakers are now calling on the administration to track down the people who withdrew cash at gaming centers and recover the money.

“I’d say that $227,000 per month is an astounding waste of taxpayer dollars,” said Seth Unger, spokesman for Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick of Solana Beach. “To me it is absolutely clear that the department failed in its duty to provide oversight. We should explore all options to get the money back.”

The electronic benefit transfer cards allow welfare recipients to access two accounts: cash offered through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and an electronic version of food stamps, which comes with strict rules governing how the money can be spent.

The cash benefits, however, can be withdrawn and spent just about anywhere. A Times review of state records found that the cards work at ATMs in 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms.

Most of the ATMs impose a withdrawal limit of about $300 a day. The monthly cash grant for a family of three ranges up to $694, while families with more than 10 people can get as much as $1,469, documents from the Social Services Department show.

Some Assembly Republicans called Thursday for assurances that welfare recipients can’t access ATMs at other “seedy” businesses. “If they’re going to shut down … the casinos, why not also shut down the ATMs at liquor stores and bars?” Unger asked.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the point of the executive order was to force the department to examine the program for all manner of abuse, but did not specify any other kinds of businesses that might be weeded out of the network. “We’re going to eliminate any waste, fraud and abuse that makes sense to eliminate,” he said.

Democrats, who have been fighting to preserve the state’s fraying social safety net in the face of a $19-billion budget gap, angrily rejected a Schwarzenegger proposal last month to eliminate the cash portion of welfare.

That was before anyone in Sacramento realized the money could be withdrawn by someone strolling from a poker game to a blackjack table.

Democratic leaders steered away from specifics while discussing calls for reform.

“We will conduct timely legislative oversight,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). “We want to make sure all families are spending the money on the children it’s intended to serve.”

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California and a coalition of other liberal-led states filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent demand that they turn over the personal information of millions of people receiving federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

USDA Secretary Brooke L. Rollins informed states earlier this month that they would have to transmit the data to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service to comply with an executive order by President Trump. That order demanded that Trump’s agency appointees receive “full and prompt access” to all data associated with federal programs, so that they might identify and eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Last week, USDA officials informed state SNAP directors that the deadline for submitting the data is Wednesday and that failure to comply “may trigger noncompliance procedures” — including the withholding of funds.

In announcing the states’ lawsuit Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the “unprecedented” demand “violates all kinds of state and federal privacy laws” and “further breaks the trust between the federal government and the people it serves.”

Bonta’s office noted that states have administered the equivalent of SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — for 60 years. It said that California alone receives “roughly $1 billion a year” to administer the program in the state and that “any delay in that funding could be catastrophic for the state and its residents who rely on SNAP to put food on the table.”

The USDA has demanded data for all current and former SNAP recipients since the start of 2020, including “all household group members names, dates of birth, social security numbers, residential and mailing addresses,” as well as “transactional records from each household” that show the dollar amounts they spent and where. It said it may also collect information about people’s income.

Meanwhile, a Privacy Impact Assessment published by the agency showed that it also is collecting data on people’s education, employment, immigration status and citizenship.

The USDA and other Trump administration officials have said the initiative will save taxpayers money by eliminating “information silos” that allow inefficiencies and fraud to fester in federal programs.

“It is imperative that USDA eliminates bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency and enhances the government’s ability not only to have point-in-time information but also to detect overpayments and fraud,” Rollins wrote in a July 9 letter to the states.

The Trump administration, which is pursuing what Trump has called the biggest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in the nation’s history, has requested sensitive data from other federal programs and services — including Medicaid and the IRS — to share with immigration officials.

That has raised alarm among Democrats, who have said that tying such services to immigration enforcement will put people’s health at risk and decrease tax revenue. California sued the Trump administration earlier this month for sharing Medicaid data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On Monday, Bonta raised similar alarms about the administration’s demand for SNAP data, questioning what it will do with the information and how families that rely on such assistance will react. His office said it appeared to be “the next step” in the administration’s anti-immigrant campaign.

“President Trump continues to weaponize private and sensitive personal information — not to root out fraud, but to create a culture of fear where people are unwilling to apply for essential services,” Bonta said. “We’re talking about kids not getting school lunch; fire victims not accessing emergency services; and other devastating, and deadly, consequences.”

Bonta said the USDA demand for SNAP benefits data is illegal under established law, and that California “will not comply” while it takes the administration to court.

“The president doesn’t get to change the rules in the middle of the game, no matter how much he may want to,” Bonta said. “While he may be comfortable breaking promises to the American people, California is not.”

The new data collection does not follow established processes for the federal government to audit state data without collecting it wholesale. During a recently concluded public comment period, Bonta and other liberal attorneys general submitted a comment arguing that the data demand violates the Privacy Act.

“USDA should rethink this flawed and unlawful proposal and instead work with the States to improve program efficiency and integrity through the robust processes already in place,” they wrote.

Last week, California and other states sued the Trump administration over new rules barring undocumented immigrants from accessing more than a dozen other federally funded benefit programs, including Head Start, short-term and emergency shelters, soup kitchens and food banks, healthcare services and adult education programs.

The states did not include USDA in that lawsuit despite its issuing a similar notice, writing that “many USDA programs are subject to an independent statutory requirement to provide certain benefits programs to everyone regardless of citizenship,” which the department’s notice said would continue to apply.

Bonta announced Monday’s lawsuit along with New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James. Joining them in the lawsuit were Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as the state of Kentucky.