The letters started to come in October. Across the county, families got word that the food benefits they relied on were being cut off or reduced to almost nothing. Of course, the letters were in English, a second language for many of the newcomers, a term used for the nearly 4,000 immigrants and refugees who call Cuyahoga County home.
For many, the uncertainty about food benefits, called SNAP, will last as long as the federal government is shut down. But President Donald Trump’s massive budget law, which Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, cut off access to the program for refugees and people granted asylum who are in the country lawfully. Previously, refugees were considered lawful permanent residents (LPRs) upon arrival and were eligible to access federal programs, such as SNAP, if they were income-qualified. Now, these newcomers must wait five years before becoming eligible.
“This is a multi-year crisis we’re looking at,” said Patrick Kearns, the executive director of Re:Source Cleveland. “We need continued community support as we move forward.“
Re:Source launched a community pantry to connect families with culturally relevant pantry essentials — white basmati rice, dried kidney beans, vegetable oil — that will be delivered directly to households in need. Later this month, they’ll also be hosting a Thanksgiving meal for 75 newcomer families.
Families caught ‘off guard’
Soon after the letters went out, families started to bring them to the Cuyahoga County Welcome Center, which connects residents who are immigrants, refugees and those with limited English proficiency with available resources, said Melaak Rashid, development director for Smart Development. The nonprofit supports the county office by providing Arabic and Somali-speaking staff to assist with translation. Rashid said that, on a typical day, the center sees about 200 newcomers, but since the SNAP changes, “it’s been more like double.”
The families getting these letters are confused. Some even think they’re fake. “They’re caught off guard and coming in thinking it’s a scam,” said Rashid.
Due to the large volume of cases, a number of administrative errors have also occurred, causing confusion for newcomer families and the organizations supporting them.
Megan Brown, a case manager at Cleveland’s U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) office, said families are also receiving letters with conflicting information. In some instances, families receive multiple letters, sometimes dated on the same day. One says they’ve been approved, and the other says they are not eligible based on their citizenship status.
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Rashid said that the system is just kicking families off automatically who could still be eligible for some benefits. She added that it’s unclear how to get these families reenrolled.
Iryna Tkachenko, another case manager at USCRI Cleveland, said someone who was disenrolled may still have money on their EBT card by accident. In these cases, they’re not supposed to use it. If they do, they could later be told they were “overpaid” and required to repay that money. The responsibility to repay falls on the individual or family, not the government agency.
SNAP loss another barrier to families working to becoming self sufficient
For newcomers already working to find stability, the uncertainty surrounding SNAP has added yet another barrier to building secure, self-sufficient lives in Cleveland.
SNAP has been a vital temporary support for newcomers who have been in the U.S. for five years or less, Rashid said. “SNAP is such a critical aid in their journey to be self-sufficient,” she said, as newcomers enter the workforce, gain new skillsets, and then climb the workforce ladder to enter career paths with higher incomes. SNAP is the support that allows them to focus on work without worrying about putting food on the table.
“These are residents in our community that we invited to come here,” Kearns said, “and part of the program and promise is that there would be some support for them to get started.”
Kearns said the reason newcomers need SNAP is simple: “They are starting their life over again from zero with literally just a few bags that they brought with them, without language experience, without employment.”
It is very common for a family to be in working poverty during the first few years here, Kearns said. “It’s a fine line between making the bills and not making those bills,” he said. According to a report by the American Immigration Council, the median household income of refugees who had been in the country for five years or less was approximately $30,500 in 2019.
A ‘storm’ of things all impacting family budgets
For families with children or seniors, SNAP benefits are a significant portion of their monthly budget. According to Rashid, families sometimes have upwards of eight to 12 members in a household. “They have no other options,” she said.
Darren Hamm, Cleveland’s USCRI Field Office director, said families are facing mounting financial pressures beyond the loss of SNAP. Rising utility costs and projected increases in property taxes are being passed on to tenants by landlords, compounding the strain on household budgets. “You have kind of a storm of things happening that are all directly monetary impacts,” he said. For many families, the $230 they once received in food assistance will now become an out-of-pocket cost — forcing them to choose between paying rent, keeping the lights on, or buying groceries.
Hamm said that advising families to simply “restructure their budgets” isn’t realistic when there’s nothing left to cut. “You can’t make a dollar out of 15 cents,” he said. For many newcomers facing language barriers or limited job opportunities, finding ways to increase income isn’t easy, leaving service providers with few options beyond helping families make impossible trade-offs.
To provide more food assistance, Kearns and Rashid both said they will have to scale back auxiliary programming that helps newcomers gain confidence, advocate for themselves, and achieve upward mobility.
“We know this is going to push teenagers and young adults in these families to be more focused on income than education,” Kearns said. He’s worried that young people will take the first job they can get, which may not necessarily move their families forward. Kearns said this situation could have long-term impacts on the individuals and on the local economy.
Rashid and Hamm said their organizations are trying to connect with other community partners to create a web of services. They aim to share who’s offering what and how local organizations can collaborate to provide comprehensive services to newcomer families in need.
For now, Kearns said, local organizations are trying to “mitigate on the food side, so those issues don’t spill over into other problems that will destabilize families in the next several months.”