Abdullah doesn’t know how long his body can hold out. 

After a day of lifting heavy metal doors to roll out finished machinery ready for transport, bruises line his forearms. When he’s assigned to the factory’s assembly line, the work is less intense, but he’s on his feet eight hours a day and finds himself grabbing at his legs to massage away the pain. 

Underneath his shirt, a pump delivers the insulin his body needs as a Type 1 diabetic. His doctor has warned that working long hours at physically demanding jobs could worsen his health. 

But the Afghan refugee, who spoke on the condition that his real name not be used for fear for his family’s safety, needs to provide. In December, his family of 10 lost $1,833 in monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. They’re among the more than 2,000 Nebraska refugees whose food assistance eligibility was canceled by President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax and spending bill. 

The cutoff has left Nebraska’s refugees figuring out how to survive in a place they thought would offer safe harbor. Grocery stores that counted on their patronage — many owned by former refugees themselves — are feeling the strain of disappearing customers and rising business costs. And an attempt by a lawmaker to restore SNAP benefits for refugees languished in committee this past legislative session. 

“The community is stepping up, and we’re trying to do as much as we can, but this is not sustainable,” said Hannah Vlach, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Restoring Dignity. “Can we keep this going for three years? … Groceries are going up, gas is going up, everything’s going up for everyone … we’re just at the beginning of this nightmare.”

Abdullah said he has had to borrow money from relatives, juggling rent, car insurance and internet bills to make sure his children get fed. And as a refugee, he’s still paying off the cost of the plane tickets that flew his family to the U.S., where he hopes to build a better life. 

“I spend it all, and I cannot save any money,” he said in Pashto through an interpreter. 

Abdullah and his family arrived in Nebraska in June 2024 after fleeing the Taliban-controlled government. Abdullah said he had worked as a journalist and assisted the U.S. military. Staying in Afghanistan could mean death. 

The family applied for their green cards a year later. They expected to get approval within six to eight months. 

But in November, an Afghan man shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington. The president called for the reexamination of Afghan immigrants who had entered the country during the Biden administration. Immigrants from countries designated as high risk, including Afghanistan, had their green card applications halted. 

Becoming legal permanent residents would restore Abdullah’s family’s SNAP eligibility. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said in some cases, refugees with pending applications could remain eligible for benefits. Abdullah went to DHHS at the beginning of the year, but was told he couldn’t get benefits because he didn’t have a green card.

With their applications in limbo, it’s impossible to tell when — or if — that relief will come. They haven’t gotten an update since July 2025.

“I worry, because this new government has brought so many changes,” he said. “It’s hard for me to feed my kids.”

Fruits and meats have become less common in Abdullah’s kitchen. Cheap staples take priority. 

Last year, Abdullah was working 40 hours a week for $15.30 an hour at a grocery store. After his family lost their SNAP benefits, he took on another seasonal job for an extra 25 hours a week. For a time, that extra income helped. But that job ended after two months. At his original job, his hourly wage rose to $16 — but his hours were cut. 

His new job at the factory pays better, but the physical demands are taxing, and he has been unable to consistently reach 40 hours a week. On the assembly line, he helps put together parts, which are then transported through the next part of the factory. He gets two short breaks per shift. He wants to continue working at the factory, and he hopes his body will adjust to the strain. 

His wife started looking for a job of her own. So far, her application has gone unanswered. 

And his eldest son, a senior at Lincoln Public Schools, picked up a minimum wage job working about 30 hours a week as a produce clerk. He’s keeping up with his studies, but free time is a thing of the past. 

They aren’t alone in their struggles. As of May 1, 2,212 refugees in Nebraska either didn’t reapply for or were found ineligible for SNAP benefits in the past six months, a restriction prompted by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law stripped SNAP eligibility for previously eligible immigrants, including refugees, asylees and special immigrant visa holders. 

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the changes tackled fraud and waste in the $100 billion SNAP program and prevented undocumented immigrants from receiving benefits. 

SNAP benefits have never been available to undocumented immigrants. Refugees, on the other hand, have been eligible for food assistance since 1977. About 1% of SNAP participants were refugees in fiscal year 2023, according to a recent USDA report. 

Now, Abdullah’s family is stretching their tax refund to afford groceries. Accessing food pantries is difficult with his work schedule and other appointments. Volunteers have donated food and gift cards where they can, but they can’t replace the full value of the lost benefits. Some donations, like certain canned vegetables, are foreign to the family.

Larger families like Abdullah’s, single-parent households and disabled refugees have been among the hardest hit by the SNAP cuts, advocates say. 

And any response to those cuts can’t fill the gap left by lost government funding, said Vlach of Restoring Dignity, which provides support services for refugees in Omaha. 

In the months since SNAP benefits were cut, Restoring Dignity has added 264 donors that together give around $9,800 every month to feed 33 families. But the loss of SNAP dollars for those families? More than $300,000 per year. 

“There’s no way that any private entity can do what the government was doing,” Vlach said. “It’s not possible … how do we make sure that people don’t starve?”

She worries that with summer break fast approaching, more Nebraska kids will go hungry. In April 2025, Gov. Jim Pillen’s office estimated that 67,690 children were enrolled in the state’s SNAP program — accounting for 45% of recipients. 

In Lincoln, a South Sudanese mother of seven came to the Asian Community and Cultural Center for help after losing her family’s SNAP benefits. Her children were relying on school food to keep from going hungry, said Nyabuoy Chan, a women and elders program manager at the center. 

Both Lincoln and Omaha public schools offer free summer lunches, but students have to go to meal sites to get the meal — hard for kids who don’t live within walking distance. 

Chan drove the South Sudanese mother to different neighborhoods to visit little free food pantries, where she stocked up on a few items for her family. But many of the food products were foreign to the mother, Chan said, and she didn’t feel confident that she could prepare them for her kids. 

Chan was able to take the mother grocery shopping, using donated gift cards to immigrant-owned grocery stores in Lincoln. 

“When we gave (her that) gift card, she just broke out and said, ‘We’ve been without food for two days,’” Chan said. 

***

Fresh produce goes rotten on Alaa Alsayagh’s shelves. 

The co-owner of Almustafa Market in Lincoln prides himself on selling quality goods, but since the SNAP cuts began, there have been fewer people with money to buy them. Alsayagh estimates around 80% of his customers received benefits. 

Now, they beg for loans. They promise to pay next month. They ask to take the expired food he’d otherwise throw away — tomatoes gone brown, melons gone soft. Indomie noodles — an Indonesian brand of cheap, dried instant noodles — have become a bestseller with large families.  

“They used to buy, let’s say, $300 to $400 (in groceries) a month,” he said. “Now they start spending $50, $70, and they take a bad vegetable.”

The Arabic market’s sales have plummeted 21% since January, he said. Meanwhile, operation costs have skyrocketed, driven by the high cost of diesel that wholesalers pass on to the business. 

Alsayagh came to Lincoln as an Iraqi refugee in 1994. He worked for Kawasaki for 20 years before taking a buyout and opening the grocery store with his brother. They opened their doors in October 2019, and joined other refugee- and immigrant-owned stores operating along North 27th Street. 

He tries to help where he can. The grocery can’t let customers take food with a promise of future payment, but he does offer a 10% discount for struggling families. 

“I don’t know how to give hope again to people,” he said. “I’m just encouraging people to work, get another job, anything — find something and do it.”

Alsayagh has been heartened by the community response in Lincoln since the SNAP restrictions began. He has seen longtime residents bring in Afghan families to buy groceries for them, spending $60 to $80 each visit. 

Gulie Khalaf said that her family’s store, Lincoln Mediterranean Market, has many immigrant customers, including refugees and asylees. 

Families on SNAP also qualified for a program that offered up to $20 extra for fruits and vegetables. Now, families have lost both forms of aid. They have stopped coming in for months at a time, she said.

The family store has had to adjust prices, battered by market trends outside their control. 

“The (customers) are constantly like, ‘Can you weigh this cucumber, I want to make sure it’s only a pound.’ … And they’re constantly asking, why are we raising the prices, because they can’t afford it,” she said. “They don’t have the help, and prices keep going up.”

Like Alsayagh, Khalaf came to the U.S. as a refugee. Her family, part of the Yazidi ethnic and religious minority, fled Iraq to escape persecution and arrived in the U.S. in 1998. Her parents arrived with young school-aged kids. Programs like SNAP helped them build a stable life in Nebraska, she said. 

Now she worries that newer refugee families may be forced to make wrenching decisions about their children’s futures. When her family arrived in the U.S., her father would pick up one of her brothers immediately after school so he could work. Eventually, he dropped out of school. 

“I don’t know how many more of us would have been taken out of school to just make ends meet if we didn’t have that help in place,” she said.  

***

For several years, Kristin Pfabe has helped Afghan newcomers like Abdullah’s family resettle in Lincoln.

Sitting before the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee in mid-February, she wanted to make sure lawmakers understood the human toll of the past year’s changes. 

She described to state senators Abdullah’s work as a radio journalist in Afghanistan, how he accompanied U.S. military forces in the field to help them ask questions to local residents. Sometimes, he’d join them for days at a time. 

Pfabe told them how Abdullah and his son have taken on extra work to help their family, and she shared an invitation to lawmakers from Abdullah.

“They want to prepare a wonderful meal for you to experience Afghan hospitality and generosity,” she said. “So that there is no conflict of interest, I will wait until the fate of this bill has been determined to email you invitations, and I will pay them to buy the food.”

Pfabe was one of many advocates testifying in favor of a bill to restore SNAP eligibility for previously eligible immigrants. Introduced by State Sen. Victor Rountree, a Democrat from Bellevue, the bill would have required the state health department to ask the federal government for a waiver from the restrictions that made refugees and other legal immigrants ineligible.

“Food is not an option,” Rountree told the committee during the Feb. 19 hearing. “Everyone in our state must eat, and there is not nearly enough support in our communities to meet that need. I think it is a misstep to make families choose between rent or groceries as our economy continues to grow worse and worse for working-class people.”

Other testifiers discussed how the cuts had harmed Afghan families specifically, many of whom were resettled as refugees or special immigrant visa holders because of their work with the U.S. government. 

“It felt personal to me,” Rountree, who served in the U.S. Air Force, said in an interview. “They risk their lives to serve alongside us, to help us prosecute a war, and then to come over and have us not keep our promises … if I had the means to take care of them, I would do it because it’s just the right thing to do.”

The bill languished in committee for months. It didn’t make it to a floor vote by the end of session in April. 

“They feel betrayed, and they are betrayed,” Pfabe told lawmakers. “When refugees start new lives, they’re incredibly vulnerable, and they deserve our support, but they don’t need help forever. It’s temporary, and it’s no secret that refugees and immigrants add more to our economy than they take.”

***

One by one, the family settled onto cushions and carpet around the evening’s spread. 

Bowls of watermelon, rice, spinach, fried potatoes and beans dotted a cream rug with metallic swirls. Bread rounds sat ready to scoop up food, and hands busied themselves arranging cups and napkins. As the sun sunk below the horizon outside of their southwest Lincoln home, the meal began.

For the last month, Abdullah’s family had observed Ramadan through daily fasting from dawn to dusk. The evening meal breaking their fast is a time for community and reflection.

Not everyone could be there that evening in March. Abdullah’s eldest son had already gone to work, eager to help keep food on the table. 

The rest of the family shared laughs and smiles as they dug into the meal. The youngest girls, in elementary school, passed a light-up musical toy between them. The eldest girls, in high school, talked amongst themselves. 

They love math, they said, “because it’s easy.” They learned some math in Afghanistan, but as girls, their education under the Taliban stopped in sixth grade. Now they’re enrolled in Lincoln Public Schools, learning at a local high school. They hope to become doctors.

It’s the kind of opportunity Abdullah prayed for when he and his wife came to the U.S. as refugees. 

“I’m happy that my kids are learning and improving in a better society,” he said.

But the loss of SNAP has left Abdullah with complicated emotions about his family’s new life in the U.S.

Several of his wife’s family members were brought to the U.S. at the same time as Abdullah and resettled in other states. Their green card applications were approved before the SNAP changes, he said. His own family remains in limbo.

“We don’t know what is going on, because all of the family came at the same time, and we had our interviews at the same time,” Abdullah said. “They all got their documents, except me. And they will all get their benefits, except me.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/with-snap-aid-cut-off-a-refugee-father-of-8-wonders-how-hell-keep-food-on-the-table/