This story was reported written VPM News.
The Virginia Department of Social Services is sharing the personal information of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program applicants with the federal government, a VDSS spokesperson confirmed to VPM News Friday.
In May, the US Department of Agriculture requested data from states, including "names, dates of birth, social security numbers, residential and mailing addresses."
The request was triggered by a March executive order by President Donald Trump seeking to cut government "waste, fraud and abuse."
Nearly 800,000 people in about 400,000 Virginia households receive SNAP benefits, according to the USDA.
In fiscal year 2022, that was about $1.5 billion in benefits paid to the commonwealth.
Majesta-Doré Legnini, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center — which provides legal representation for those seeking assistance with public benefits law — said Virginia's grant of permission says personal data needs to be used only for the improvement of the SNAP program.
"Unfortunately, we are in a time right now where we can't guarantee that that's going to be its only use," she said. "I think there isn't cause to panic just yet, because we have no evidence that it's being used for anything else, but there is cause for concern for anyone who doesn't want their data being shared with irrelevant agencies."
The data request goes back to Jan. 1, 2020, and Legnini estimated it would affect just under 1 million people's data.
State Sen. Danica Roem (D–Manassas) said that there may be other motives behind the executive order.
"When you see them doing this under the supposed guise of 'waste, fraud and abuse,' it leads me to believe that the role is to disenroll people from the program," she said in a phone interview Friday with VPM News. "Or there is some sort of ICE tie-in ... to find people they don't want to be in this country."
Mixed status families — with both citizen members who are eligible for the food assistance program as well as undocumented household members — could be particularly vulnerable to this type of data sharing if it's shared with immigration officials. For example, parents without legal status are not eligible for benefits, but their US citizen children would be.
In June, the Associated Press reported the Trump administration has provided the US Department of Homeland Security with the immigration status of Medicaid enrollees. Twenty states, not including Virginia, sued over the data sharing.
The National Center for Economic Justice is also currently suing the USDA over the SNAP data sharing.
"Data has not been shared in this volume and in this way ever before," said Legnini.
SNAP was the focus of major changes to the federal budget in a tax bill that passed earlier this summer; Virginia is set to be on the hook for about $270 million unless it reduces inaccuracies in who receives benefits, Gov. Glenn Youngkin told reporters in July.
Virginia over- or under-pays about 12% of SNAP recipients. A VDSS spokesperson said the department does not track error rate by localities, which are responsible for both processing applications and distributing funds.
The USDA letter to state agencies said the data should have been transmitted to the US Food and Nutrition Service by July 30. A VDSS spokesperson did not say when Virginians' data was transmitted.
Copyright 2025 VPM