El Paso County enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dropped by more than 8,700 households, or 13%, in May compared with the same time last year, according to Texas Health and Human Services data.
The downward trend is part of a statewide decline in SNAP beneficiaries, attributed in part to new federal policies that make it harder for people to hang onto their enrollment – even when they remain eligible for benefits, said Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, a hunger-relief organization.
“This is a time when people are most at risk for food insecurity given high food prices, high fuel prices, cost of living in general is very high right now,” Cole said. “At a time when SNAP enrollment would be going up to reflect that, we’re seeing the opposite happen.”
President Donald Trump signed budget legislation H.R. 1 into law in July 2025, staggering sweeping changes to the food stamps program in the following years.
Nearly 58,800 households in El Paso received SNAP payments in May – the lowest number in recent years. Allotment depends on income and number of eligible people in a household. A household of four can receive a maximum of $994 per month.
Ruby Ramirez, a single mother working as a restaurant server in El Paso, said her allotment has decreased by hundreds of dollars in recent months despite her income remaining largely the same. She doesn’t know why. In June, Ramirez received a little more than $100 in food stamps – the least she has ever received for the month. She used to receive more than $300 per month to feed her and her two sons.
“I have growing boys that are out for the summer and it’s difficult. They want to eat all day,” Ramirez said. “It’s a lot of help, even $100 I’m grateful for, but it’s so little compared to before.”
“Everything is so expensive, you can barely get by even with food stamps,” she said. “You have to work more because they don’t give you enough food stamps, but then you work more and they don’t give you food stamps. I don’t understand.”
Work requirements expand for seniors, vulnerable groups
In February 2026, the work requirements for able-bodied adults expanded, raising the cutoff age from 55 to 65. Parents of children 14 and older are required to work when previously, parents of children 18 and younger were exempt. Exemptions were also eliminated for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and young adults aging out of foster care.
To meet the requirement, residents must work or participate in an approved job training program for at least 20 hours a week to maintain benefits.
“Many states have abused the system by requesting work requirement waivers,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in an April news release. “Today marks the start of a new era for SNAP – prioritizing work, career and technical education, and volunteering rather than idleness, excess spending and misapplication of the law.”
April Rosales, social services manager at the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank, said she has seen the newly affected groups fall out of SNAP when they tried to renew their enrollment.
In some households, a parent isn’t working because they are helping their child with school and activities. The trade-off to work instead doesn’t seem worth it to them, she said. For others – seniors, homeless and veterans – Rosales said she sees a desire to work, but they don’t have reliable transportation to get to a job or to training set up by the Texas Workforce Commission. These are people who have not been in the workforce for years, she said.
“A lot of our clients don’t know how to use a computer,” Rosales said. “They don’t have transportation. Even if we are referring them to Workforce to get a job, that’s one of the major barriers. It breaks my heart because we can’t assist them.”
Rosales described the situation as frustrating, as many clients don’t know about the SNAP changes until they come to the food bank and she informs them. People who were exempt from work requirements at 59 came back six months later only to be told they have to work 20 hours a week, she said. These are people taking care of family members or grandchildren, and now they’re missing out on SNAP, she added.
The work requirements are not designed to help people find work, Cole said. Instead of investing in employment training opportunities or removing barriers to work, the federal government is applying a strict one-size-fits-all rule to a population that does not have one size to find work.
“We are not arguing that people shouldn’t have to work,” Cole said. “But if you want to use a government program as a tool to make people more self-sufficient, then you should help people find work and gain skills instead of using it to punitively reduce people’s access to SNAP.”
Immigrants pushed away from food stamps
H.R. 1 terminated SNAP eligibility for most refugees and asylees in November 2025.
Outside of that law, Cole said ICE arrests and the federal crackdown on immigration have fostered fear in households with mixed immigration statuses.
Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP benefits. But parents of eligible children may be forgoing benefits for their children if they think it will hurt their ability to become a legal resident, Cole said.
They worry applying for government assistance will jeopardize their ability to stay in the country or stay with their child, she said.
Administrative errors remain persistent problem
Starting in 2027, the federal government is reducing its share of SNAP administrative costs from 50% to 25% by shifting costs to the states. In addition, states that have error payment rates at or above 6% must pay a portion of total SNAP benefits.
The error rate in Texas hovers between 8% and 9%. Errors can be both underpayments or overpayments of SNAP benefits.
While the policy is intended to address fraud, Texas has historically low instances of fraud and most errors are unintentional mistakes made by caseworkers, not SNAP clients, Cole said. The lengthy, detailed application and continuous renewal makes the process prone to error, she said.
After calling the El Paso County SNAP office, Ramirez believes an error is the reason for underpayment after renewing her enrollment. One caseworker informed Ramirez she received additional income from a second job located outside of El Paso. Ramirez said she doesn’t know where the state got that information because she doesn’t have other employment. Another person, a supervisor, told her she made more than $3,200 at her server job, which Ramirez said was impossible.
“I gave them income tax forms, employment verification, pay stubs, kids’ daycare costs,” Ramirez said. “I don’t know what else.”
Cole said Feeding Texas is pushing Congress to allow a two-year delay before the cost-sharing kicks in so all states have more time to reduce their error rates, whether it’s through technology upgrades or new staff training.
“If we don’t hit the target, Texas will be on the hook for $700 million,” Cole said. “That’s concerning because states never paid for SNAP like that before, it’s not in our budget.”
“If the state says we don’t want to pay this much, they’ll look for ways to artificially depress enrollment or cut benefits, reduce eligibility,” she said.
Under pressure to reduce its error rate, Texas has begun asking for additional documentation, which creates more opportunities for people to fall through the cracks, Rosales said. The food bank is receiving clients from other community organizations to investigate why their SNAP applications are rejected, she said.
One couple she saw last week involved someone who is disabled and in hospice, Rosales recalled. Neither have to work because they’re over 65 and their income indicated they were eligible – yet they still got rejected for SNAP benefits, Rosales said.
“It could have been as simple as they didn’t turn in something, a mortgage receipt or rent receipt or latest bank statement,” Rosales said. “Now that the state is asking for more documentation to reduce error rates, more people are getting dropped or denied and they don’t reapply. They just assume they’re not eligible.”
Disclosure: El Paso Matters CEO Robert Moore is a board member for El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank. The newsroom’s policy on editorial independence can be found here.
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