Iowa to deliver SNAP recipient data to the federal government

Iowa will comply with a federal order to give Social Security numbers and other data to the federal government without resistance. Privacy advocates call it a “dangerous precedent” that violates constitutional protections.

One in 12 Iowans — 259,300 to be specific — use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. It’s one of the nation’s largest, most effective anti-hunger programs, giving funds to help buy food. But as Republicans in Washington, DC, prepare to cut $300 billion from the program, Iowans who’ve used the program in the past are getting put on a list. 

SNAP is federally funded but administered by the states. Iowa manages its own recipients and processes for distributing benefits. However, the Trump Administration is breaking with precedent and demanding states hand over the personal information of anyone who participated in the program. In a letter, the USDA asked for social security numbers, addresses and benefit histories from the last five years. 

Iowa Health and Human Services confirmed to Iowa Starting Line this week that it will comply with the Trump Administration’s May 6 order to hand over personal data. 

“SNAP is a federally funded assistance program that is administered by individual states,” said IHHS Communications Director Alex Murphy. “The department will comply with the order and does not anticipate this causing any slowdown in processing SNAP applications.”

The letter, citing President Trump’s March 20 executive order “Stopping Waste, Fraud and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,” threatens states with “noncompliance procedures” if they refuse to grant access to the data.

“The Federal Government must have unfettered access to comprehensive data from all State programs that receive Federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases,” the USDA letter states.

This has raised alarms for privacy advocates who say this is government overreach. John Davisson is senior counsel and director of litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. He said the USDA’s order is reckless.

“It is an unprecedented extension of the administration’s campaign to consolidate personal data,” Davisson told NPR. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and others have argued the handover of personal data violates the Privacy Act and Paperwork Reduction Act. 

The data collection comes as the Trump administration has expanded efforts to identify and remove immigrants. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been accused in multiple federal lawsuits of illegally accessing personal and financial databases across government agencies.