Refugee families are the latest group to face SNAP food benefit cutoff

K.Q. was sharing a hotel room with her husband and four children when she received a card loaded with funds from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The family had just arrived in Chicago, a city where they knew no one, after being accepted into the U.S. refugee resettlement program. They came from Lebanon, where they spent 12 years after fleeing Syria’s deadly civil war.

She took her four children to the grocery store, telling them they could buy anything they would like with the federal food assistance. It was a rare treat for the family that in Lebanon struggled to make ends meet.

“We are so happy because I can go buy everything for my children,” said K.Q., who asked not to be fully identified out of fear it could harm her application to become a legal permanent resident. “In Lebanon we had [a] hard time, and we don’t have enough money to buy anything the children need.”

But after less than three years here, they are on the verge of losing food assistance, along with thousands of other refugees, asylees and survivors of human trafficking. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax overhaul law that passed last year limits which immigrants can access the SNAP food program, along with enacting expanded work requirements for others. The changes for immigrants went into effect in Illinois on April 1 and are part of broader restrictions on the refugee resettlement program.

As many as 16,000 people could lose SNAP benefits because of the change in eligibility for immigrants, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Trump’s policy changes put refugees in a Catch-22, resettlement agencies say. They can only receive SNAP benefits once they become legal permanent residents. But the federal government isn’t processing their green card applications. Historically, refugees have been given a legal form of immigration with a pathway to citizenship.

For K.Q., this change has left her feeling confused and unsure how she will feed her family.

“We came here because they chose us to come,” she said. “Why now they [don’t] give us … help us to live here, because, here — it’s expensive.”

Cloud of uncertainty for refugees

For decades in the U.S., when refugees first arrived they could tap into SNAP and other safety-net programs, like Medicaid health insurance. That support was critical, people in refugee resettlement say, to provide stability because refugees' first jobs typically pay minimum wage. Most of their earnings go towards rent and other basic expenses.

“Refugees have counted on this vital part of the safety net to help them as they are trying to start over here in Chicago,” said Sally Schulze, communications manager for RefugeeOne, a Chicago resettlement nonprofit.

That was the case for K.Q. and her family, who lived in one hotel room for two months before they could move into an apartment in Chicago. The family initially received about $1,100 in monthly SNAP benefits, which was later reduced to $635 once her husband started working at an area airport. He is the sole breadwinner while K.Q. has focused on improving her English through classes with a community group.

The loss of SNAP is just one challenge refugees are facing. The Trump administration lowered the number of refugees allowed to 7,500 for the current fiscal year, the fewest since the program started in 1980, NPR previously reported. That’s down from 125,000 in 2025 under President Joe Biden.

Fears also persist in the community of being swept up in raids and ending up in an immigration detention center, advocates say.

World Relief Chicagoland, another local resettlement agency, has been meeting with families in anticipation of government plans to re-interview them, essentially serving as a second vetting of their refugee status, said Susan Sperry, executive director of World Relief Chicagoland.

And last November, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in an internal memo said it was no longer processing refugee applications for green cards, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. It typically took about 13 months to receive a green card after applying.

In a statement, USCIS confirmed it paused adjudications for immigrants from countries deemed high risk by the Trump administration. It did not say when the pause would end.

“National security and the protection of every American must take precedence, even when weighed against potential challenges such as workforce shortages,” the agency stated in an email, adding that it believes the Biden’s administration did not properly vet immigrants.

Syria, where K.Q. and her family fled, is among the countries deemed high risk because it’s still emerging from civil unrest and “lacks an adequate central authority for issuing passports or civil documents,” according to the White House.

The family applied for legal permanent residency about a year ago, but like others, they’ve received no updates on their application.

“I hope everything could change because also here we need to be safe,” K.Q. said. “[If] we have [a] green card, we can stay here. I’m worried about, yes, about my children, about me.”

‘The math just doesn’t add up’

RefugeeOne anticipates 175 families, or 850 individuals they serve will lose SNAP benefits at some point this year, the majority of them children, Schulze said. World Relief Chicagoland expects more than 300 of their families will lose benefits.

The changes in green card applications adds to the uncertainty.

“Without a green card, that means they aren’t going to be able to get this food assistance that they desperately need for months, possibly even years, unless lawmakers make some changes,” Schulze said.

She said her organization hears from families expecting benefits to end this month.

World Relief Chicagoland is trying to help refugees find additional jobs or ways to increase their income, Sperry said. RefugeeOne is also meeting with families to look at their household budgets to see what, if anything, could be cut.

“The math just doesn’t add up for so many of these families,” Schulze said. “Because especially for those with children, you just can’t make ends meet without SNAP.”

K.Q. is crunching the numbers for her family, but it’s hard to see how they will make up for the $635 they will lose in SNAP. She uses it to buy bread, cooking oil and Halal meat.

She hauls a black shopping cart to her English classes, where there’s also a weekly food pantry. During a recent trip, she grabbed two jugs of milk, lasagna pasta, eggs and a pineapple to supplement her family’s groceries. The family typically runs out of SNAP benefits before the end of the month.

K.Q. saw the language classes as a way to one day obtain a better paying job. But she now thinks she will likely have to look for a job sooner, though she was just reaching the classes to prepare for the GED exam.

“I don’t know what we can do, but I worry about that,” she said.

In other refugee families, young adults in school will have to pivot to finding full-time work to help feed the family, Schulze said.

On the state level, the Greater Chicago Food Depository and the Latino Policy Forum are advocating for a bill to provide cash assistance to immigrants, such as refugees, who will lose SNAP. The measure is pending in the state Legislature.

Both resettlement groups are also referring families to pantries and collecting grocery store gift cards to help families.

“This is not sustainable,” Schulze said. “We just can’t replace a federal government program by collecting gift cards.”

Dreaming of a college-bound son

K.Q.’s husband now paints furniture for a living, making just enough to survive. Their three younger children attend school and K.Q. looks after them. Although their rent has increased, they don’t want to risk moving and missing important letters about their immigration case.

“We do anything the government tells us,” she said.

She didn’t know anything about Chicago before living here, but she knew she needed to get her family out of Lebanon as Syria remained unstable. Her oldest son had to leave school in Lebanon to work and supplement her husband’s wages. K.Q. said Syrian children only received about four hours of schooling with limited subjects.

In Chicago, she has seen her children flourish in school. They have picked up English and are making friends. One of her sons, an 11th grader, is dreaming of going away to college to study computer science.

“He’s so excited about that, and I am so happy,” K.Q. said, lighting up. “He asked me before … ‘Mom, if I take a scholarship for college far from here, do you mind that?’ I told him, ‘No, this is your future, but I will miss you.’”