The number of Texans receiving food assistance dropped 14% in a year, reflecting a national decline, the result not only of stricter new work requirements imposed last year by the Trump administration but also rising fears of deportation, according to advocates.

State data shows that in April, there were nearly 500,000 fewer eligible Texans participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, than in April 2025. Enrollment has slipped since October after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which introduced multiple restrictions on SNAP. At the end of April, Texas reported 3.1 million eligible SNAP individuals.

The greatest declines occurred in the Gulf Coast, North and South Texas regions. SNAP participation dropped between 10% and 20% in more than two-thirds of all Texas counties.

Nationally, participation dropped 10% — about 4 million fewer people — between July 2025 and February 2026, the latest data available at that level, and participation in the program fell in every state.

“We are seeing that Texas is experiencing a meaningful decline in SNAP enrollment,” said Celia Cole, chief executive officer of Feeding Texas, the state association of food banks, which has seen an increase in demand in recent months.

Pinning down the exact causes of the decline has been tricky. The state Health and Human Services Commission, the agency that distributes SNAP benefits and publishes data ahead of the federal government, does not attribute the decline to any particular factors.

“Current SNAP caseloads are part of normal fluctuations,” HHSC spokesperson Jennifer Ruffcorn told The Texas Tribune by email earlier this month.

Since the pandemic, the monthly count of Texas SNAP participants has fluctuated between 3 million and 4 million. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the SNAP program, shows that besides the partial government shutdown in 2019, Texas monthly SNAP counts have not dropped below 3 million since 2009, at the official end of the Great Recession.

A stronger economy could correspond to a SNAP drop, but federal labor statistics showed no declines in monthly state unemployment rates since January 2025.

Cole and others point to two different things, perhaps acting in concert, as the likely causes for the most recent dip.

First, there’s new stricter work requirements to qualify for SNAP. While there have always been work requirements for certain SNAP applicants, there were critical changes made last year under the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Previously, those caring for a child under 18 were exempt from work requirements. But, since December, Texas parents and household members of a dependent child age 14 or older now must work 30 hours a week or prove they are exempt. Veterans, people 24 and younger who recently aged out of foster care, and unhoused people also must now meet those work requirements.

Also, able-bodied individuals ages 18 through 65 without dependents must now work or attend a work program for at least 80 hours per month to receive benefits.

“The (new) work requirements now cut people off SNAP after three months if they can’t find consistent work,” Cole said. “And we’re seeing similar trends in other states across the country, so that just reinforces our concerns that this is about access, limited access, rather than need going down.”

Ruffcorn said the new work requirements wouldn’t explain any decline that happened before March. Because of the 3-month window for SNAP recipients to find work after the new requirement went into effect in December, HHSC wouldn’t have started kicking people off SNAP until March.

Then, there’s the increase in immigration enforcement since Trump took office. Although undocumented immigrants cannot receive benefits, their children or household members who are citizens can qualify for SNAP. Cole said some undocumented parents whose citizen children might qualify are forgoing assistance altogether because they fear giving up their information to sign up for SNAP will result in deportation.

At least 27 states, including Texas, have forwarded SNAP information to the federal Department of Homeland Security.

“We believe this decline is driven in part, at least by immigration-related fears, and confusion in mixed status families which is leading eligible citizen children to lose access even when they qualify,” Cole said.

Also, the OBBB further restricts SNAP benefits to certain lawful permanent residents and U.S citizens. No longer are those who are granted conditional entry under U.S. asylum and refugee laws able to participate in SNAP.

Together those developments — stricter work requirements and immigration fears — point to the major reason for the SNAP decline in Texas, according to Lynn Cowles, director of Health and Food Justice for Every Texan, a left-leaning public policy group.

“All of sudden we’ve seen this sharp decline that occurred across the board,” Cowles said. “And it doesn’t seem to be explained by anything else.”

Even before the new restrictions, Texas’ SNAP program has a reputation for its tougher enrollment process.

Texas is one of nine states that forces those SNAP applicants without a job or who cannot claim an exemption from work rules to attend mandatory employment and training, also known as “E&T” programs operated by the Texas Workforce Commission for HHSC.

Advocates for low income Texans say E&T is a paperwork tactic to remove whole families from the program. Most who enroll in the program do not complete it and that allows the state to penalize them by removing them from SNAP rolls. In fiscal year 2024, 245,703 SNAP eligible Texans who enrolled in the state’s E&T program did not complete it and the state removed them from SNAP.

In its own self-evaluation before the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, HHSC acknowledged that the E&T program’s “participation levels are not at acceptable levels, and sanction levels are much higher than desired.”

Also, there is another change in SNAP that could be a factor. In 2027, Texas could face paying $700 million to the federal government to participate in SNAP if it does not reduce its current error rate of 9% to 7%.

A SNAP error rate does not reflect people fraudulently obtaining benefits. Instead it’s based on unintentional mistakes by the agency or SNAP client that results in an underpayment or overpayment.

HHSC would not comment on whether more time spent scrutinizing each application to help bring down that error rate has slowed the number of applications they’re processing — a factor that could result in fewer SNAP participants.

HHSC’s rates for approving applications and renewals for SNAP in a timely manner have dropped each month this year. Those monthly rates had climbed in 2025 after being at or below 75% most months from 2022 through 2024.

“HHSC is working as quickly as possible to issue benefits to eligible Texans,” said Tiffany Young, another HHSC spokesperson. “We are currently analyzing data and determining strategies to reduce applications in the queue.”

Disclosure: Every Texan and Feeding Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.