OfflineRefugee families come to the United States seeking safety and the chance to rebuild their lives. They arrive with legal status, but also with enormous barriers: trauma, language challenges, interrupted education, and the need to start over from scratch. For decades, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been one of the most important tools helping newly arrived families get on their feet.
But last summer, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) changed that. SNAP eligibility was cut for thousands of legally present refugee families. Overnight, parents working multiple jobs, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, and children who have already survived war and displacement lost the support they rely on to eat.
Across the country, service providers are seeing the same heartbreaking patterns: Parents skipping meals so their children can eat. Food banks overwhelmed by newly arrived families seeking help. Teachers noticing students too hungry to focus. Clinics seeing the health impacts on pregnant and lactating women who cannot meet basic nutritional needs.
Hunger shows up everywhere. In classrooms, in clinics, in children’s growth and health, and in the stress families carry every day. For refugee families, SNAP is not just a nutrition program. It is a lifeline that supports stability, school readiness, and the ability to integrate into their new communities.
Cutting that lifeline doesn’t save money. It shifts costs onto states, schools, hospitals, and local nonprofits already stretched thin. And it sends a message that the United States will welcome refugees in name, but not in practice.
We are urging our grassroots advocates to urge their Members of Congress to restore SNAP eligibility for legally present refugee families and protect children, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, and communities already stretched thin.
Our voices can help ensure the United States lives up to its values, and that no family rebuilding their life here has to face an empty fridge.
