California and a coalition of other States led by Liberals on Monday, a federal legal action contesting the recent demand from the United States Ministry of Agriculture to submit personal information from millions of people receiving federal food assistance through the additional nutrition aid program.
USDA secretary Brooke L. Rollins informed the states earlier this month that they should transmit data to the USDA food and nutritional service to comply with a decree by President Trump. This order required that the appointments of Trump agencies receive “full and rapid access” to all data associated with federal programs, so that they can identify and eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse”.
Last week, USDA officials informed the State SNAP directors that the deadline for data submission is Wednesday and that the fact of complying with “may trigger non -compliance procedures” – including funding for funds.
By announcing the States trial on Monday, California Atty. General Rob Bonta said that “unprecedented” demand “violates all kinds of state and federal laws on privacy” and “breaks more confidence between the federal government and the people it serves”.
The Bonta office noted that the states administered the equivalent of the SNAP advantages – formerly known as food coupons – for 60 years. He said that California alone receives “about 1 billion dollars a year” to administer the program in the state and that “any delay in this funding could be catastrophic for the State and its residents who count on SNAP to put food on the table.”
The USDA has required data for all the beneficiaries of current and former snap since the beginning of 2020, including “all names of household group members, birth dates, social security numbers, residential and postal addresses”, as well as “transactional files of each household” which show the amounts in dollars they have spent and where. He said he could also collect information about people’s income.
Meanwhile, an assessment of the impact on privacy published by the Agency has shown that it also collects data on the education of people, employment, immigration status and citizenship.
The USDA and other Trump administration officials said the initiative would save money by eliminating the “information silos” that allowed ineffectiveness and fraud to transmit in federal programs.
“It is imperative that the USDA eliminates bureaucratic and ineffectiveness duplication and improves the government’s ability not only to have occasional information, but also to detect overpaye and fraud,” Rollins wrote in a letter of July 9 in the United States.
The Trump administration, which continues what Trump called the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in the history of the country, has requested sensitive data to other federal programs and services – including Medicaid and IRS – to share with immigration officials.
This has made the alarm among the Democrats, who declared that linking such services to the application of immigration will endanger the health of people and reduce tax revenues. California continued the Trump administration earlier this month to share Medicaid data with immigration and customs application.
Monday, Bonta raised similar alarms on the request of Snap data from the administration, wondering what she will do with the information and how families who count on such assistance will react. His office said it seemed to be “the next step” in the administration’s anti-immigrant campaign.
“President Trump continues to arm private and sensitive personal information – not to eliminate fraud, but to create a culture of fear where people do not want to ask for essential services,” said BONTA. “We are talking about children who do not have a school lunch; Fire victims do not give emergency services; and other devastating and deadly consequences. “
BONTA said that the request for SNA’s request for data on benefits is illegal under the established law, and that California “will not comply” while taking the administration before the courts.
“The president cannot change the rules in the middle of the game, no matter how much he may want,” said Bonta. “Although it can be comfortable to break up promises to the American people, California is not.”
The new data collection does not follow the established processes so that the federal government checks the data of the State without collecting it roughly. During a period of recently concluded public comments, Bonta and other general prosecutors submitted a comment arguing that the request for data violates the law on privacy.
“The USDA should rethink this imperfect and illegal proposal and work with states to improve program efficiency and integrity through the solid processes already in place,” they wrote.
Last week, California and other states continued the Trump administration on new rules prohibiting undocumented immigrants from accessing more than a dozen other services funded by the federal government, including Head Start shelters, in the short term and emergency, popular soups and food banks, health services and adult education programs.
The States did not include the USDA in this trial despite the fact that it issued a similar opinion, writing that “many USDA programs are subject to an independent legal requirement to provide certain programs of benefits to everyone independently of citizenship”, which, according to the opinion of the ministry, would continue to apply.
Bonta announced Monday’s trial with New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James. The Governor of Kentucky, the Governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, and the Attorpers General for Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusets, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington, Washington, Kenton, Washington, Kenton, Washington, Kenton, Kenton.
