Georgia’s refugees can no longer access SNAP. How are nonprofit agencies managing the fallout?

Caption

Staff at the refugee resettlement agency, New American Pathways, pack food boxes with vegetables and other items inside the organization's makeshift food pantry.

Credit: New American Pathways

At the New American Pathways office in Clarkston, just outside the Atlanta metro area, a break room was turned into a makeshift food pantry.  

Big reusable grocery bags and cardboard boxes lined chrome shelves. Some were organized by country of origin — depending on what culturally appropriate foods they contained.  On this day, certain bags contained products for the Eid al-Fitr holiday, coming up the following weekend.  

Paedia Mixon, director of the organization, went through what was available. 

"Basic things like flour and pasta and oil, but also pistachios and other nuts, spices," she said.  

This food was for the refugee families that Mixon and others help resettle in the U.S. Most of it could be found at the grocery store but now could be causing a strain on refugee families' wallets following a cut to monthly benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  

Historically, people who have fled to the United States from persecution in their home countries have been eligible for social services here. That includes health care and food assistance from SNAP.  

But with the passage of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, they can no longer access that assistance. The bill eliminated SNAP eligibility for certain non-U.S. citizens, including people granted legal political asylum.  

"I read it and ... just sort of started to feel this panic," Mixon said.  

As of December, about 8,000 refugees, asylees and other legally present immigrants served by resettlement agencies such as Mixon’s were actively receiving SNAP benefits in Georgia, according to data from the state Department of Human Services. They started losing their benefits in January, receiving termination letters in the mail or being notified during systematic reviews with a case worker.  

President Trump’s bill made other changes to SNAP, too, including expanding the population required to complete monthly work requirements to include unhoused people, veterans and certain young adults in foster care. 

• RELATED: How will Georgia manage changes to SNAP and Medicaid rules? State leaders are figuring it out   

According to congressional leaders, these provisions in the bill will save the federal government $187 billion over 10 years. Meanwhile, states like Georgia that have higher than average SNAP payment error rates may be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars per year because of an additional, new requirement for them to cover the cost of the program’s operation, starting in October.  

Interconnected needs for success 

Kyryll Levterov of New American Pathways says one of the first things people like him do for refugees when they arrive in the U.S. is enroll them in SNAP.    

"People who are like one, two, three years in the country, they really relied on SNAP, and I'm speaking about people with the large families ... like lack of U.S. education, U.S. working experience," he said.  

SNAP benefits offered a first step toward stability while families built new lives. That fits into the publicly stated goal of Georgia’s Refugee Program — to provide assistance to support “self sufficiency, independence, and protect Georgia’s vulnerable children and adults.” 

But when benefits were cut in January, Levterov started seeing that stability unravel for his clients. As of March, about five to six families a week were coming in needing help to fill the gap left behind by SNAP. 

"A couple of months ago it was like maybe one emergency a week, maybe a couple of times," he said. "Now it's a few times a day, so now it's very different."

Families which had not been food insecure for months or years are now back to square one. With the increased focus on food comes less emphasis on job preparedness or enrollment in continuing education.  

How much a family can get in SNAP benefits largely depends on their household size and income. For a family of four, monthly allotments span from $700 to $900. Larger families can be eligible for closer to $1,000 a month.  

This hole in monthly budgets has created a crisis for families like Alexi’s, which are also balancing child care and rent.  

Alexi, who receives assistance from New American Pathways and asked to go by one name, is from Tanzania. His family of seven has been in Georgia for five years.   

"There was a time we didn’t have food for a week," he said via a translator in the office. "We get this, we get that but food stamps were really helping us a lot."

Refugees and asylees are facing more than just changes to food access this year. Asylum cases are still on pause for about 40 countries that the White House considers “high risk.” Following outcry from resettlement agencies, a federal court has temporarily blocked a policy that would allow the detention of refugees without lawful permanent residency who have been in the U.S. more than a year. 

Mixon said the many of the people she works with feel disillusioned.  

"I've heard over and over again: 'I thought I knew what America was, and I was wrong,'" she said. "I’ve heard that many, many times. I mean it’s quite a shock."

By mid-April, New American Pathways sent out an emergency call for donations of culturally appropriate foods — their shelves in the makeshift food pantry had been emptied.  

Meanwhile, Mixon and her team have already started planning for the next emergency. Coming this fall, immigrants without green cards will no longer be eligible for Medicaid. 

"As daunting as this food security piece was, I think health care is even more daunting, because none of us are doctors," Mixon said. "We aren't in a position to provide health care."