Mobile Food Pantries Reach New Yorkers Afraid of ICE, But Hochul Won’t Fund Them
One family in Washington Heights would rather share a single apple among three children than risk standing in a food pantry line. Martina Santos knows this because she knows them. For over a decade, she has volunteered at West Side Campaign Against Hunger, checking in families, packing bags, and learning names. Lately, some of those names aren’t showing up anymore.
“La migra mala – they want to separate us”, Santos said, using the Spanish term for ICE and immigration authorities, describing what she hears from families who no longer come.
They’re not the only ones. In New York City, immigrant families are staying away from pantries, sending neighbors to pick up food, or going without entirely. According to the Deportation Data Project, between June and July alone, NYC saw 2,492 ICE arrests with detention. That fear is now showing up in pantry lines and communities. When ICE enforcement intensified in Minnesota last year, according to Food Bank News pantry visits dropped by up to 50 percent in some locations. Food pantries turned to mobile deliveries because it was the only way to reach families too scared to leave their homes, even for food.
New York’s pantries aren’t waiting. NY Common Pantry has moved its lines inside its brick-and-mortar locations to minimize exposure on the street. Early one morning last year, ICE came to their location. No one was detained. But the visit was a reminder of how close the fear has gotten. “We put in measures to help keep everybody safe,” said Deputy Executive Director Judy Secon. “We try to get our lines in as quickly as we can in the morning, so people are in the space, not outside.”
The demand in the numbers reflects the urgency. The mobile program delivered nearly 2.8 million meals in fiscal year 2026, a 23 percent increase over the previous year. However, today 35 organizations – a mix of community-based organizations, housing facilities, and places of worship – are on a waitlist to join but can’t be served.
“A lack of resources, food, trucks, and staff prevents us from expanding,” said Ellen Miller, a spokesperson for NYC Common Pantry. Much of the mobile program’s funding comes from private donors and foundations, not the state. Guests travel from as far as Staten Island, taking the ferry, then buses or trains, arriving with empty carts and leaving loaded down. “It’s a lot to ask of someone, especially if you’re already struggling,” she added.
The pressure to adapt is citywide. During a recent visit to the West Side Campaign Against Hunger Upper West Side location, Executive Director Greg Silverman spoke to me about the need for mobile programs. “Safety is in some ways dignity,” he told me. “They should feel safe, and they should have a choice of when they get their food.” That’s what drove WSCAH to expand its home delivery pilot, now serving 1,950 people who are SNAP-ineligible or too afraid to come in. If you bring food to a church someone already attends or a community center they already trust, they don’t have to travel across neighborhoods on public transit or stand in a visible public line. When Governor Hochul visited WSCAH’s warehouse, Silverman was direct: “Unfortunately, your state funds can’t be used for this,” he told her.
Hochul expressed sympathy and understood the need but didn’t make any concrete commitments. The families Silverman worries about most are not hard to picture: “If you’re a mom with two kids who’s not eligible for SNAP, and you’re like, I’m afraid right now, I won’t even go to drop my kids off at school, how are they going to even go to the grocery store?”
The demand driving these programs isn’t going away. “This is usually referred to as emergency food,” said Ellen Miller from the NY Common Pantry, “and we don’t think it’s emergency. This has become what people need to sustain their families regularly.”
Working two and three jobs and still not making ends meet, families are factoring pantry visits into their monthly budgets. The programs keeping them fed are running on private donations. The state hasn’t caught up. The state’s primary hunger relief program, with restrictions, is called the Hunger Prevention Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP), and has funded emergency food organizations for over 40 years. It was built for a different time. A time where ICE agents were not terrorizing communities forcing families to hide.
The New York State budget for HPNAP FY 2026-27 provided $72.8 million to brick-and-mortar pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters. Mobile distributions, home delivery, and community hubs do not qualify. WSCAH has taken its own protective measures. The organization stopped requiring clients to fill out a federal attestation of poverty. “The indignity of making someone fill out this sort of attestation,” Silverman said, “but it’s also documentation that’s being sent out somewhere. We’re not doing that. Our goal is to get people food.”
WSCAH and NY Common Pantry are building the infrastructure the state hasn’t funded yet. WSCAH is actively pitching the state on a $20 million innovation fund that would cover mobile distribution, home delivery, community hubs, and virtual ordering systems. “Most pantries don’t have dollars to cover the costs of these innovations,” Silverman said. “We want to see emergency feeding organizations across the city have the ability to achieve this.” Without it, he said, the programs will continue, just more slowly, and at far smaller scale than the crisis demands.
This week, Martina Santos is back at West Side Campaign Against Hunger, as she has been for over a decade. She will check in with families, pack bags, make lunches, and look for the names that aren’t showing up anymore. The mobile programs that could reach them exist. The funding that could scale them does not. Until Albany catches up, the families too scared to stand in a line will keep sending their neighbors or going without.