More Border Security Means Less Food Security
As cuts to food assistance take effect, the U.S. government has canceled the publication of its annual hunger report.
In September, the Department of Agriculture announced it would no longer publish its annual Household Food Security Report, a key source of data on how many American households lack reliable access to food. The report will cease publication in October, after a final set of data for 2024 is released.
The report’s cancellation is part of a broader trend within the Trump administration to downplay government data that could reveal the outcomes of controversial policy decisions, from labor reports to climate science. In its cancellation announcement, the USDA stated that reports on American hunger are “politicized” and “do nothing more than fear monger.”
This change coincides with funding cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), which began on October 1 for some recipients; cuts will continue rolling out into 2028. These cuts are part of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress passed into law in July. At the same time, an estimate by the American Immigration Council puts additional funding across federal agencies for border and immigration security at $170.7 billion, on top of their already-substantial budgets, including $45 billion to build more prisons for migrants.
Kyle Ross, a policy analyst for the Inclusive Economy at the Center for American Progress, said in a recent analysis that the timing of the USDA’s cancellation of food insecurity reports “is no coincidence” after the cuts introduced by Trump’s key signature legislation.
“By canceling the FSS [food insecurity report], the administration is making it more difficult for policymakers and the public to track the harms of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” said Ross.
As many as 5 million of the most vulnerable people in the country will lose some level of SNAP benefits, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research group. The organization estimates that 2.4 million people are set to lose food assistance entirely because of the funding cuts.
Libby Saenz, CEO of the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, told the Rio Grande Guardian in July that the Trump cuts to SNAP will be “nothing short of catastrophic” for border communities, many of which are seeing military vehicles roll in alongside increased border wall construction.
Jeremy Everett, founder and executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty at Baylor University, expressed alarm at the cancellation and its implications.
“If we’re unable to really see the impact on food security because we’ve gotten rid of the measure, that could help make the statement that we don’t have hunger and we don’t need these food assistance programs,” said Everett. “You can see how these things could potentially feed on themselves.”
Everett noted that the canceled USDA report also supports a network of national and state organizations that rely on the data to make decisions about how to help those in need.
“It established a shared language and consistent measurement,” said Everett. “For 30 years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, this survey has provided a stable framework.” He explained that organizations could become unable to compare data over time and critical data points across standard definitions.
Everett said that what he once saw as indifference toward food insecurity “has turned into active antagonism” during the current administration.
“For most of my adult life, we were combating apathy when thinking about food and economic justice,” said Everett. “Well, the act of antagonism comes when you pass legislation to provide tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and you try to balance that budget by making cuts to programs for the poorest.”
Everett, who previously worked as a teacher and religious leader and holds a master’s degree in theology, ecology, and food justice, said every major religious tradition speaks to the issue of hunger.
“Hinduism says to give food is to give life,” said Everett. “The Quran says if you go to bed while your neighbor goes hungry, you’re not one of us. Old Testament scriptures have the prophet Isaiah saying, ‘Spend yourself on behalf of the hungry, and your night will rise like the noonday.’”
Trump and other administration officials have framed the cuts to food programs as an effort to promote employment and personal responsibility while reducing dependency on federal programs. “For able-bodied adults, welfare should be a short-term hand-up, not a lifetime handout,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, in an op-ed for The New York Times.
The administration claims the cuts will mostly affect healthy adults without children because of new work rules. SNAP, however, already limits this group to three months of benefits in any three-year period if they are not working. Instead, the Trump administration is tightening requirements for waivers that would grant benefits to this category in geographic areas with high unemployment and few job opportunities, impacting the most vulnerable people in impoverished areas.
“The premise is that we have adults taking advantage of the program and not working when they really don’t need it,” said Everett. “I lived in low-income communities for 20 years as an adult, so I could see what poverty looked like from the inside out. And then the research on top of that would indicate that that is not a true reality of poverty in our country.”
Everett said that in many cultures, caring for the needy is a litmus test for societal health. In the borderlands, this includes those on the move, crossing the border for various reasons, as ministries from Brownsville to San Diego can attest. In Texas, the federal and state governments are now focused on border security as food security diminishes.
“In the only end-of-world scene in the entire Gospel of Matthew, Jesus returns as the king,” said Everett. “To the astonishment of the crowd that gathered around him, the sole criterion for judgment was whether or not you cared for the needy, that you provided food for the hungry, that you provided a place to stay for the stranger or the immigrant.”
It saddens me to see the depths of cruelty that our country has descended into. I used to be proud to be an American. I will no longer be able to say that until the current administration is just a bad memory.