By Richard Halstead | rhalstead@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
State and private money is being used to provide food assistance to undocumented Marin residents who are no longer eligible for federal food stamps.
More than 15,000 Marin residents receive food stamps, also known as CalFresh or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The federal program provides qualified applicants with a card that can be used like a debit card at participating grocery stores and farmers markets.
House Resolution 1, signed into law by President Trump last July, limited CalFresh eligibility for noncitizens, effective April 1. In addition, starting June 1, able-bodied adults without dependents would be required to work or volunteer 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month to get or keep their CalFresh benefits.
“While it is likely that we will start to see statewide dropoffs in the program, we are committed to doing everything we can to maintain eligible Marin County residents onto the program,” said Kari Beuerman, assistant director of the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services.
Beuerman said that people who lose their eligibility due to their immigration status or failure to meet work requirements will be provided access to a virtual or physical grocery gift card.
“They can use these to purchase $600 worth of groceries over a three-month period,” Beuerman said. “The idea is that this will help to ease the burden for these individuals and give them more time to hopefully transition to other community resources.”
The gift cards are being funded with donations collected by the Marin Community Foundation last fall, when the federal government shutdown over a budget dispute between Republicans and Democrats temporarily blocked funding for CalFresh.
On Oct. 31, the Marin Community Foundation announced it was soliciting donations to fill the gap left by the blocked SNAP funds and was donating $500,000 from the Buck Trust. It later announced it had raised more than $1.3 million while spending only about $100,000.
Beuerman said she expects the foundation to supply about $700,000 to this new effort to compensate for federal cuts. No one with the foundation was available for comment.
Also assisting in the CalFresh transition program is the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, Community Action Marin and GiveCard, a company that provides platforms for organizations to issue prepaid cards for direct payments.
Beuerman said the county initially estimated that as many as 300 Marin residents would lose their federal food assistance due to their undocumented status and some 1,500 would be subject to the new work requirements.
However, Diana Hernandez, director of the county’s public assistance division, said, “As we’ve interacted with households at their annual renewals, the impact so far has been less than we’ve expected, which has been great.”
Hernandez said that is because some people are eligible for the California Food Assistance Program, a state-funded program that provides benefits equivalent to CalFresh to qualified immigrants who are not eligible for CalFresh.
Legal noncitizens of the United States can be eligible for the food assistance program if they are ineligible for federal California Food Assistance Program benefits, based solely on their immigration status under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, as amended by the Food Stamp Reauthorization Act of 2002.
Participation in CalFresh by Marin residents increased by 60% between January 2019 and January 2026. During that period, the number of Marin residents 60 or older receiving food stamps grew by 119%, compared to 40% among residents between the ages of 18 and 59.
“There has been a marked increase in our older adult population participating in CalFresh, with modest increases in our adult and child populations,” said Emma Crimmins, a county eligibility specialist.
Nevertheless, the number of Marin residents enrolled in CalFresh dropped to 15,124 in 2025 from a high of 16,132 in 2024.
“In some cases, people are self-selecting out of applying for CalFresh,” Beuerman said, “due to concerns about how the information may be shared with the federal government.”