Giving Compass' Take:

• Harvest Public Media reports on undocumented immigrant parents who don't sign their children up for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of deportation fears.

• SNAP can help many families, but stricter immigration policies are having a psychological effect. Can nonprofits and policymakers make it easy for kids in need to have access to health foods?

• SNAP is also a crucial service for the mentally ill, but it can be a difficulty process to navigate.

In the small city of Fort Morgan, Colorado, 33-year-old Verónica delicately stacks cans of food into her mini shopping cart, strolling the narrow aisles of the Rising Up food pantry to gather eggs, milk, apples and an extra-large box of cereal.

“This [place] is really helpful for me,” Verónica said in Spanish. She asked not to be identified by her full name due to the sensitive nature of the topic. “Without it I’d be left some days without any food.”

Her cart is piled high with enough food to last about a week, because her monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits “don’t always go far enough” for her, her husband and her five young children.

Food pantries could play an increasingly important role for immigrant families across the United States. While unauthorized immigrants cannot receive food stamps, their children may be eligible if they’re U.S. citizens and live in a household that’s at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty guidelines — or about $2,600 a month for a family of four.

But advocates say these families have grown increasingly fearful of sharing their information with a government agency and would rather face food insecurity than risk enrolling in SNAP.

Anya Rose is a bilingual food assistance navigator with the hotline for Hunger Free Colorado, and speaks with families of unauthorized immigrants on a daily basis. Rose tells them their information cannot be shared with other government agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Still, some are unwilling to take what they believe is a serious risk.

Read the full article about immigrants and the benefits of SNAP by Esther Honig at Harvest Public Media.