Ines Chomnalez, NewsGuard's Reality Check ; Undocumented Immigrants Are Not Feasting on Food Stamps
"False Claim of the Week: 59 Percent of U.S. Residents Without Legal Status Collect Federal SNAP Food Benefits
NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” highlights a false claim from NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints proprietary database of provably false claims and their debunks. The claim that 59 percent of U.S. residents without legal status collect federal SNAP food benefits is NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” due to its widespread appearance across social media platforms and websites, its high engagement levels, and the high-profile nature of the sources promoting it. Those three factors, as well as both its significant subject matter and potential for harm, makes it our False Claim of the Week.
Debunk: Millions of Immigrants Without Legal Status Are Not Receiving SNAP Benefits, Contrary to Conservative Claims
What happened: Citing a report on the Newsmax network, conservative social media accounts are claiming that 59 percent of U.S. immigrants without legal status collect Supplement Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps. Some users advancing this claim said it shows that the federal nutrition program should be gutted.
Context: On Oct. 1, the federal government entered a shutdown, pausing funding to the federal Agriculture Department (USDA), which is responsible for issuing SNAP benefits. SNAP provides low-income Americans with electronic cards they can use to purchase food.
Because of the government shutdown, the USDA said in an Oct. 27 statement that no new benefits would be issued to the 42 million Americans who receive SNAP assistance, starting on Nov. 1. On Oct. 31, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the administration must continue to make the payments for now.
A closer look: On the Oct. 27 episode of the Newsmax primetime show “Finnerty,” host Rob Finnerty said, “Fifty-nine percent of all illegal aliens are collecting food stamps, meaning that most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.” Other conservatives soon began spreading the claim.
Conservative X user @overton_news posted the Newsmax clip on Oct. 27, quoting Finnerty’s statement that “59% of ALL illegal aliens are collecting food stamps” in the caption. The post received 1 million views and 45,000 likes in less than one day.
The same day, conservative news site TheGatewayPundit.com published an article headlined, “DEMOCRAT BACKFIRE: The Government Shutdown Has Awakened the Public About How Many People Are on Food Stamps.” The article included the above quote from Finnerty advancing the false claim, and added, “It really is shocking and now that Democrats have prolonged the shutdown, more people are going to be talking about this.”
Actually: Residents without legal status are not eligible to collect SNAP benefits, according to the USDA’s website.
The site states, “SNAP eligibility has never been extended to undocumented non-citizens.”
Although Finnerty did not provide any evidence for his claim, it appears to be based on a misinterpretation of a statistic, previously cited accurately by conservative social media users, from the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a think tank that supports tight immigration limits.
CIS stated in a 2023 report: “Our best estimate is that 59 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants, also called the undocumented use at least one major [welfare] program.”
As the quote indicates, CIS was describing households receiving assistance from any “major” welfare program — not just SNAP. CIS defined “major” programs as assistance in the form of cash, Medicaid, housing, and food (including the nutrition program for women, infants, and children known as WIC, as well as school meals).
Broken down by specific welfare program, the CIS report estimated that 0.9 percent of U.S. households led by non-legal residents receive SNAP benefits. The report did not clarify whether that percentage was composed of non-legal residents obtaining SNAP benefits illegally, or of legal residents lawfully collecting the benefits but who live in a household headed by a non-legal resident.
Newsmax did not respond to an email from NewsGuard requesting comment on the matter."
