When Angelica Garcia attempted to renew her household's SNAP benefits this spring, she expected a familiar administrative process. The single mother of three in Tucson completed the required forms, phoned Arizona's Department of Economic Security repeatedly - often being dropped after long holds - and spent hours waiting for a caseworker in a sparsely staffed DES office. By the time DES reapproved her case in June, Garcia had missed two months of benefits and relied on donated food and inexpensive staples such as beans, rice and tortillas to feed her family.
Garcia’s experience reflects a broader national shift. Data through March from the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicate that more than 4.7 million people have lost SNAP benefits since President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law went into effect last July, representing roughly 11% of program participants. Arizona has seen the most rapid contraction: state data through the end of May show SNAP enrollment there declined by about half, amounting to more than 457,000 Arizonans no longer receiving benefits, including nearly 196,000 children.
What the federal law changed
The legislation reduces SNAP funding by $187 billion, or approximately 17%, over the next decade. It achieves this in part by broadening work requirements, restricting eligibility for some immigrants, imposing new penalties on states that fail to meet performance benchmarks beginning in October next year, and shifting more administrative expenses onto state governments.
Implementation of the federal changes is a central driver of the drop in enrollment, according to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. State-level decisions about how and how quickly to operationalize those provisions have produced variation across the country. Arizona, for example, has moved rapidly to put the federal changes into practice, a pace state officials and policy experts say contributes to the sharp decline in participation.
Arizona’s policy response and administrative tightening
Arizona officials say they are compelled to comply with the new federal standards. Brett Bezio, a DES spokesperson, said the state has adjusted processes to meet the requirements and avoid fiscal penalties. Liliana Soto, press secretary for Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, emphasized the choice Arizona faces: "If we don’t comply, we will be fined hundreds of millions of dollars and more vulnerable Arizonans will lose their food assistance."
To reduce the state’s SNAP error rate - a metric that captures overpayments and underpayments - DES has tightened documentation standards, requiring materials such as pay stubs or leases. Arizona’s reported error rate for 2024 was 8.84%, below the national average of 10.9% but still above the 6% threshold specified in the law. Under the new rules, exceeding that 6% threshold could trigger obligations for states to cover up to 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits; historically the federal government covered the full cost.
DES flagged the potential fiscal exposure in its 2027 budget request, estimating the additional state cost could be about $201.5 million next year if penalties apply. To avoid such outcomes, agency officials have tightened eligibility verification and application processing.
How process changes affect access
Policy analysts and frontline service providers report that stricter verification procedures and heavier administrative burdens are producing longer waits and more frequent denials. Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, described a pattern in which applicants encounter overloaded phone lines, are asked for documentation they cannot obtain, or submit requested materials that the state lacks capacity to process.
The state also expanded the geographic reach of work requirements. Where previously 14 of Arizona’s 15 counties had waivers or exemption status, the new federal law now places work requirements on 14 of the state’s 15 counties, an increase from just one county last year, according to Joseph Palomino, director of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress. That change, Palomino said, is contributing to delays and to eligible people "falling through the cracks." DES said it is hiring additional staff and working with a third-party call center to improve wait times.
Real-world impacts: families and food banks
The SNAP reductions have coincided with surging demand at food pantries in Arizona. The Arizona Food Bank Network, which coordinates with local food charities, reported that about 843,000 Arizonans sought help from a food pantry in April, an 8% increase from 779,000 in April 2025, and a total that exceeded the number of people then receiving SNAP benefits. Food bank users declined to about 790,000 in May, according to the AFBN's figures.
Terri Shoemaker, executive vice president of the Arizona Food Bank Network, said pantries are struggling to close what she called "a massive gap." Myriam Flores, a Phoenix mother of seven, recounted that she lost $1,100 a month in SNAP benefits in January after she was unable to renew her access. Flores said she had spent hours on hold with DES only to have calls drop, and that she was visiting the St. Vincent de Paul pantry in Phoenix nearly every day to feed her children. Reuters could not determine whether Flores has resumed efforts to regain benefits or whether she is currently eligible.
Cindy Bernardo, a program manager at the St. Vincent de Paul pantry, said many clients have encountered delays or lost benefits as Arizona enacts the federal changes: "So many of them have lost their benefits," she said. "And they have reapplied, and most of them can’t even get an answer to their questions." The DES and the USDA did not comment on the AFBN’s reported increase in food-bank use.
Voices from Washington and state officials
The White House framed the SNAP revisions differently, with a spokesperson saying the overhaul "prioritizes American citizens, and implements reasonable cost-sharing measures with states to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse." The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service attributed at least part of the decline in enrollment to the changes in work requirements contained in the federal law.
Soto, the governor’s press secretary, and state officials emphasize compliance with federal mandates to avoid large fines and further losses of assistance. Bezio described stricter documentation requirements as a means to limit errors and prevent punitive state-level financial liabilities.
Wider national picture
Arizona’s decline is the most rapid, but other states have also reported substantial drops in SNAP participation. USDA data show enrollment decreases of 17.4% in Louisiana, 11.6% in Wyoming and 13.7% in Virginia. Additional state reporting for Virginia identified a 12% decline in SNAP enrollment in the 12 months ending in March, according to the Virginia Department of Social Services. The Wyoming Department of Family Services said a "large portion" of its decline was due to the federal changes. The Louisiana Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment.
Virginia’s Department of Social Services cited the broader human consequence of the law. "The primary impact of this law on the Commonwealth is that now more families are going hungry when nobody should have to go hungry," said Michael Pulley, a department spokesperson.
Operational pressures and state responses
Analysts and advocates say many of the operational strains stem from states moving to meet the new performance standards while limited staffing and technological capacity hamper timely processing. DES has said it is expanding hiring and contracting to address phone wait times and case-processing backlogs. SNAP administrators, advocates and policy experts describe a window in which applicants face additional paperwork and verification hurdles as states adjust practices to the new law.
Experts caution that these implementation dynamics are affecting different groups unevenly, and that children and households with unstable or irregular income sources are particularly likely to encounter difficulty complying with documentation requests and eligibility tests.
Looking ahead
The federal penalties for failing to meet the new error-rate and performance benchmarks are scheduled to begin in October next year. State officials in Arizona and elsewhere say they have limited choices: comply quickly and risk service disruptions as systems and staffing catch up, or move more slowly and risk significant fiscal penalties. In Arizona, the rapid rollout of the federal changes has already translated into large numbers of families temporarily or permanently losing an important source of food assistance, while local emergency food providers are absorbing increased demand.
The human toll is captured in accounts such as Garcia’s and Flores’s: long waits, mounting stress and reliance on charitable food networks. As states implement the new rules and administrative practices continue to shift, the number of affected households and the strain on food assistance systems will remain central measures of this policy change’s immediate effects.