More than 6,100 refugees in Onondaga County are set to lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits by May 2027 because of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, said officials from the county’s Department of Social Services.
The SNAP program provides monthly funding for people and families to pay for groceries. SNAP is funded by the federal and state governments.
The loss of benefits could significantly affect Onondaga County’s refugee population and community institutions created to support refugees.
In the past, refugees, asylum grantees and humanitarian parolees, among others, have been immediately eligible for SNAP benefits. But last year, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill changed that. Now only immigrants with green cards are eligible.
The county government oversees the distribution of benefits through DSS.
When families apply to receive SNAP benefits, Onondaga County must certify their eligibility. SNAP recipients must regularly reapply and be recertified to continue receiving benefits.
If a state has too high an error rate, or too many ineligible people receiving SNAP benefits, it will have to pay a higher percentage of the total cost of the program. That could be a $1.2 billion price tag in New York State, said the New York State Association of Counties.
County officials are working on a plan to mitigate the loss, according to Justin Sayles, the spokesperson for County Executive Ryan McMahon.
Sayles called the plan “comprehensive” and said it will be unveiled in the coming weeks. The details of the plan are being developed, he said.
Refugees and asylum grantees are not eligible for SNAP until they have adjusted their status to become legal permanent residents, or colloquially, green card holders.
Generally, immigrants to the U.S. cannot apply to adjust status until they’ve been in the U.S. for a minimum of five years. Historically, there were carveouts for refugees, who were required to adjust status after one year in the country.
Onondaga County resettled 945 refugees in 2025. But many more could be affected.
Onondaga County began applying the new standards laid out in the One Big Beautiful Bill while recertifying SNAP benefits in April. The county has identified 1,940 cases in which people were eligible for benefits based on their immigration status, but are no longer eligible, said Sarah Merrick, the DSS commissioner. Those cases affect 6,128 people.
Refugees are still required to obtain a green card and the Department of Homeland Security is now required to detain them if they don’t apply for adjustment and appear for an interview. Last year, the Trump administration instructed United States Citizenship and Immigration Services offices to temporarily pause processing green card applications for refugees from five Central and South American countries.
Later, USCIS paused the processing of green card applications for immigrants from any of 39 countries. A judge on Friday ruled the USCIS pause illegal, but the decision could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
One Venezuelan refugee, who arrived in the U.S. in November 2024, told Central Current she applied to adjust her status after one year, but her application has not yet been processed.
If a refugee were to get their green card by the time their case was recertified, they would remain eligible for benefits, said county officials. If they do not have recertification, they will lose benefits. Applying for a green card does not count toward certification.
The loss will have profound effects on the lives of both refugee families and the social fabric and community institutions of Syracuse, said Nicole Watts, who represents the Northside in the Onondaga County Legislature.
Onondaga County has one of the most significant refugee populations in New York State. The county resettled more than 10,000 refugees in a decade. In 2025, more than a quarter of all refugees resettled in New York were resettled in Onondaga County.
Around 200 retailers in Syracuse accept SNAP benefits, a U.S. Department of Agriculture site shows. That includes several specialty grocery stores and restaurants that cater in large part to the county’s refugee communities.
Many of Onondaga County’s refugees live on Syracuse’s Northside, and DSS officials estimate that around half of the people who are likely to be impacted by eligibility changes live in that neighborhood.
“Obviously that’s a pretty significant hit,” said Watts. “Not only to the people who are now going to need to be accessing food another way, but also the businesses that rely on this.”
The Northside has a large number of grocery stores which sell products refugees might need to cook food from their home countries. Among many others, there is an Afghan grocery store, a Burmese grocery store, and a Congolese grocery store. While these stores have customers of all cultural backgrounds, they sell to refugees at high rates.
Central Current went to several grocery stores which accept SNAP and serve high proportions of refugees. Workers at each said that they did not yet know what the impact to their businesses would be, but they gave an estimate of how many of their customers used SNAP benefits to pay for food. At different stores, those estimates ranged from 35% to 80%.
Community institutions in their Northside are working to find ways to protect their community.
Watts is convening a roundtable and a public discussion on the subject in the coming weeks.
Relief will likely come at multiple levels, said Watts: support to food pantries, which are likely to absorb the initial shock of the changes; support to cultural grocery stores, which are likely to be hit by a sudden lack of customers; and support to families, who may be offered workforce programs to help them find jobs that pay enough to support their families without benefits.
Watts hopes that the impact to local grocery stores will be solved through business solutions, which could include marketing these stores to others in Syracuse and on the Northside. Further solutions will likely come from those most impacted, she said.
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