Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins throughout an occasion in her workplace on June 10, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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Democratic lawmakers expressed “deep concern” in regards to the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s intent to gather the non-public knowledge of tens of thousands and thousands of federal meals help recipients and despatched Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins detailed questions in regards to the effort in a letter Wednesday.
NPR reported final month that the USDA was taking the unprecedented step of demanding states flip over delicate knowledge on Supplemental Diet Help Program recipients – together with their citizenship standing, within the case of a minimum of one state.
The Trump administration, led by the Division of Authorities Effectivity group, has been amassing delicate knowledge on People and residents as a option to bolster immigration enforcement efforts and discover potential cases of fraud in federal packages.
In a Could 6 lettera USDA adviser informed states the division could be accumulating the names, beginning dates, Social Safety numbers and addresses of SNAP recipients and candidates from the previous 5 years from states’ third-party digital advantages switch (EBT) fee processors. The steerage cited President Trump’s March 20 govt orderwhich requires the federal authorities to have “unfettered entry” to knowledge from state packages receiving federal funds as a part of an effort to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
Of their letter, the members of Congress stated there are already high quality management and anti-fraud measures in place to detect SNAP overpayments that don’t require the division accumulating such knowledge.
“There may be merely no affordable justification for authorizing such a sweeping assortment of data, significantly given the cybersecurity and privateness dangers,” reads the letter signed by 35 Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass. and Rep. Angie Craig D-Minn., who’s the rating member on the Home Agriculture Committee.
“As well as, USDA’s effort dangers irreparably damaging SNAP’s popularity by eroding People’ belief in state businesses and EBT processors as good-faith stewards of their private knowledge, thereby imperiling efficient program administration,” the letter reads.
The letter stated the Trump administration has been on an “unprecedented quest to gather and consolidate as a lot private knowledge from the American folks as potential” and has endangered People’ privateness and violated “the letter and spirit” of legal guidelines just like the Privateness Act.
The lawmakers urged the USDA to “instantly stop any knowledge assortment” associated to the Could 6 letter and “disgorge any knowledge” already collected till extra info is shipped to Congress in regards to the effort, although it’s unclear if USDA has collected knowledge but.
After a federal lawsuit accused the division of not following privateness legal guidelines, a USDA official stated in a Could 30 court docket submitting that knowledge assortment had not but begun. On a duplicate of the Could 6 letter on the USDA web site, an advisory now seems stating the division’s Meals and Diet Service “is clarifying that EBT Processors have been instructed to not effectuate the info switch outlined within the letter till additional discover… that requisite procedural safeguards have been met.”
The letter from members of Congress provides Rollins till June 30 to reply in writing to a sequence of detailed questions, together with which states have agreed to share knowledge, how USDA will retailer the info, who can have entry to the info and whether or not it will likely be processed by synthetic intelligence.
The letter additionally asks Rollins about compliance with federal privateness legal guidelines and the way she is going to guarantee the info isn’t used for functions exterior the scope of what’s allowed underneath the Meals and Diet Act.
Have info you need to share with NPR about SNAP, DOGE entry to authorities databases and immigration? Attain out to Jude Joffe-Block by way of encrypted communication on Sign at JudeJB.10. Please use a nonwork machine.
