What we know about claims USDA found thousands of dead and double-enrolled people on SNAP

In November 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins found that 500,000 people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit were double-enrolled and that 5,000 dead people still received the benefit. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), nearly 42 million people received monthly SNAP benefits, sometimes referred to as food stamps, in fiscal year 2024. On average, SNAP provided $187 per month, or about $6 per day, in benefits to help seniors, people with disabilities and families purchase household food staples. 

One Threads user who shared the claim about the double-enrolled and dead people receiving SNAP benefits posted a video clip from a Fox News interview of Rollins with the caption, “🚨 BREAKING: In a jaw-dropping revelation, Sec. Brooke Rollins found 5,000 DEAD PEOPLE getting SNAP, and 500,000 PEOPLE getting SNAP ‘2 times under the same name.’”

The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), X (archived), Instagram (archived) and TikTok.

During an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Nov. 12, 2025, Rollins said (time code 02:26) her department found, “Half a million people getting benefits two times under the same name. 5,000 dead people,” during a review of SNAP recipient information the USDA gathered from 29 states. The next day, on Nov. 13, 2025, Rollins told “Rob Schmitt Tonight” on Newsmax, “That 5,000 dead people, that was just one month. The number is closer to 186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”

Snopes asked the USDA to provide independently verifiable data to back up Rollins’ claims. Instead, a USDA spokesperson sent a blanket statement, reading:

Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends. Rates of fraud were only previously assumed, and President Trump is doing something about it. Using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work. As well as ongoing analysis of State data, further regulatory work, and improved collaboration with States.

Given the lack of detail from Rollins and the lack of independently verifiable data from the USDA, we leave this claim unrated.

“Recertification processes” in the USDA statement likely referred to Rollins’ Newsmax interview during which she said the USDA would “have everyone reapply for their benefit” as part of fraud-prevention efforts.

Government data shows high rate of ‘improper payments’ through SNAP

Though the USDA did not provide access to the data Rollins said she used to back her claim, data from other government agencies showed SNAP had a high rate of “improper payments” where the program paid the wrong amount or should not have made the payment at all. This payment type included both under- and overpayments.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency that audits how the federal government spends taxpayer money, wrote in its latest report on SNAP covering fiscal year 2023 that improper payments accounted for 11.7% of SNAP payments in FY23, amounting to around $10.5 billion. The GAO wrote that SNAP had paid $2.7 trillion worth of improper payments since FY03.

The USDA SNAP “Scorecard,” a quarterly report submitted by some government assistance programs that tracks improper payments, showed SNAP made improper payments amounting to around $9 billion in FY24, accounting for 10.3% of payments.

Neither set of data specified whether double enrollment or payments to dead individuals accounted for any of the recorded improper payments. The GAO wrote that “states made improper payments related to SNAP mainly because they did not verify recipients’ eligibility for program benefits,” which did not exclude either reason. Recipients could have been double-enrolled if states did not check that a person was already in the program, or a dead person could have continued to receive benefits if states did not remove them from the database after their death.

Data from FY23 and 24 indicated that while SNAP’s improper payment rate fell, improper payments still accounted for more than one in 10 SNAP payments by the end of FY24.

What we know about Rollins’ SNAP recipient data

Rollins told Ingraham on Nov. 12, 2025, that the USDA asked states to share SNAP recipient data on her first day in February 2025 and that 29 states had complied. According to Rollins, it was this data that revealed the double-enrolled and dead recipients.

According to a USDA memo, the agency first announced in May 2025 that it would collect data from states about SNAP recipients in line with a Trump administration executive order issued in March.

On May 6, 2025, Gina Brand, a senior official at the USDA, asked states to collate and share: 

1. Records sufficient to identify individuals as applicants for, or recipients of, SNAP benefits, including but not limited to personally identifiable information in the form of names, dates of birth, personal addresses used, and Social Security numbers.
2. Records sufficient to calculate the total dollar value of SNAP benefits received by participants over time, with the ability to filter benefits received by date ranges.

Brand sent another memo on July 23, 2025, asking states to complete the requested data sharing by July 30. According to Brand’s memos in May and July, the data should cover Jan. 1, 2020, to July 23, 2025.

On July 28, 2025, two days before Brand’s deadline, 20 states sued the USDA over its “unprecedented demand” to hand over data that the plaintiffs said “flies in the face of privacy and security protections in federal and state law.” The state of Pennsylvania joined the lawsuit in September 2025, bringing the number of plaintiffs to 21.

That same month, Judge Maxine Chesney temporarily blocked the USDA from enforcing warning letters that threatened to withhold SNAP funding for states that didn’t send in the requested data. 

The court had not reached a decision on whether to block the USDA from requesting the data in question at the time of this writing. Rollins told (time code 02:20) Ingraham on Nov. 12, 2025, that the USDA was “in litigation right now” regarding the 21 states that had not submitted SNAP recipient data.

In sum …

Without additional information from the USDA, it was not possible to independently verify Rollins claim that the agency found that 500,000 people on SNAP were double-enrolled and that 5,000 dead people still received the benefit. 

Other government data indicated that the SNAP program had a high rate of improper payments in FY23 and 24, meaning payments of the wrong amount or that it shouldn’t have made at all. That data did not provide the exact reasons behind the improper payments so did not outright support Rollins’ claims. 

Rollins said the USDA got the insights from data from 29 states that submitted information on SNAP recipients in response to a department request. At the time of this writing, a federal judge in California had temporarily blocked the USDA from withholding funds from the 21 states that did not provide that data and instead sued the USDA, claiming the request was a breach of privacy and security protections in federal and state law.

During interviews on Fox News and Newsmax, Rollins repeated a claim that SNAP “increased by 40%” under former U.S. President Joe Biden that Snopes has previously found to be, at best, misleading. For more rumors we’ve investigated about SNAP, see our collection here.