The Brief

On a warm evening in early August, friends and family gathered in Juan Ramón González’s Pasadena backyard to eat homemade tacos and share stories about the kind-eyed 56-year-old who had lived in the neighborhood for three decades.

González, who entered the country in his 20s without authorization, had recently been reassessing his life in the United States. Amid challenges that once seemed unimaginable, he had been wondering whether he could — or should — stay here, or return to the homeland he hadn’t visited since the mid-1990s.

When he first told his wife, who has a U.S. green card, that he was thinking of “self-deporting” back to his home state of Michoacán in southwestern Mexico, she thought he was joking — and it wasn’t funny.

González had started considering leaving after the Trump administration began an aggressive campaign of harassment, detention and expulsion targeting undocumented immigrants. According to President Donald Trump, “People in our country illegally can self-deport the easy way, or they can get deported the hard way.”

The latter method sometimes involved the federal government shipping off immigrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador or an alligator-surrounded, military-style prison camp in the Florida Everglades, or even cells built to hold presumed al-Qaida terrorists at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

The Trump administration claims to have already deported 400,000 people as of September and says it is targeting the estimated 14 million remaining undocumented immigrants, almost a million of whom are believed to live in Los Angeles County, according to research from USC. Since ICE and Border Patrol cannot round up so many people, according to Amica Center for Immigrant Rights senior attorney Amelia Dagen, tactics involving high-profile cruelty aim to terrorize people like González into fleeing.

As the sun set over Pasadena that night, it illuminated the clouds shades of pink and orange against a deep purple sky. González looked up at the spectacular colors and told his loved ones how grateful he was to know them, how thankful he was that God had blessed him with “so many angels.”

González admires the sunset from his backyard on the evening before his departure.

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Alexis Hunley

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Capital & Main

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A land of opportunity

In the early 1990s, González was working in restaurants and hotels in Pátzcuaro, a town with red-tile roofs and colonial architecture on the edge of a high-altitude lake in Michoacán. He was earning enough to get by, but sometimes relied on tips to pay the bills. A relative encouraged him to seek out his destiny north of the border. After some convincing, González flew to Tijuana and then walked, he said, for three days to enter the United States.

Thanks to a family connection, work came fast. After a couple weeks in Pasadena, he was earning minimum wage, which was more than he ever had. By living on a tight budget in an apartment with some relatives, he discovered that he could send money to support his family south of the border.

Soon, he started working at a local Kentucky Fried Chicken and took a liking to the assistant manager. Three years later, they married and began raising two kids on a quiet Pasadena street. From his front porch, González became a friendly fixture of his neighborhood, greeting passing neighbors like Annabelle Freedman, who moved into the area in 2023. She later said that there was a warmth about González and his family that helped her to feel at home in Pasadena.

Weeks before his departure, González and his daughter look through family photos.

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Alexis Hunley

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Capital & Main

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For decades, González thrived there and rarely felt anxious about his legal status. The way he saw it, none of the presidents he had lived under in the U.S. — Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden — had caused him much trouble, and he never felt the need to regularize his immigration status, even after having a daughter who was a U.S. citizen. “For 30 years we had no problems. Life was good,” González told Capital & Main in a Spanish-language interview.

But when Trump returned to the White House early this year, “Everything changed.”

Heavily armed masked men began to grab day laborers in parking lots and throw them into unmarked vans. Border Patrol agents in riot gear deployed tear gas near residential neighborhoods, while others in plain clothes manhandled food vendors on the street.

“Watching everything on TV made me depressed,” he said. To him, it looked like kidnappings. “In all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Know your rights”

In January, while one of the most destructive wildfires in state history was reducing nearby homes to ash, González evacuated his family for a month. Their house was spared from the flames, but in the chaos, the restaurant where he was employed lost many of its customers and could no longer afford to keep him on. He began to look for new work, but amid Trump’s ongoing crackdown on immigrants, that job search slowed to a crawl because González was afraid to leave his neighborhood.

Freedman was handing out “Know Your Rights” stickers around Pasadena when she bumped into González. “If you know anyone who is undocumented,” she told him, “please share these.”

It wasn’t until the next time they bumped into each other that he told her about his immigration status. From then on, the two regularly met to discuss the challenges of undocumented life, which provided González with an outlet of sorts.

But that didn’t change his circumstances. Without an income for months, he was eating away at his savings, and his dread over immigration raids kept him up at night worrying that masked federal agents might storm into his home and grab him.

One night in May, Daisy — González’s 22-year-old American-born daughter — was getting ready for bed when she received a phone call from her father. He sounded faint, confused. Earlier that night, a stranger had found him on a sidewalk in Highland Park, fading in and out of lucidity, and called for help. González vaguely remembered something about being picked up by an ambulance. He had suffered a heart attack.

Ever since the Trump administration began large-scale raids at many of Los Angeles’ Home Depots, car washes and restaurants, González’s blood pressure had been spiking. The risk was real, he knew, since he had previously been through a heart attack several years earlier.

When Daisy arrived at the hospital, she saw wires connecting González to medical devices and crisscrossing his weakened, shirtless body.

If he were younger and healthier, González thought, he might not have let his circumstances get to him as much. There are millions of immigrants who, despite their fear, continue to work in industries that have long relied on, and sometimes exploited, undocumented labor, to get by and help their loved ones. There are community groups that have stepped up to protect vulnerable people from being victimized by federal agents from Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago to Portland, San Francisco, Boston and beyond.

Despite the widespread solidarity in his city, González, well into middle age, felt worn down. He started asking himself, “What am I doing here?”

If looking for work was difficult before, the heart attack made it nearly impossible. Stuck at home in bad health with constant anxiety, González came to a decision: He would “self-deport” and leave the community he’d been a part of for more than half his life.

The border

It’s one thing to decide to leave, it’s another to figure out how.

With the help of family and friends, González plotted his departure. He decided not to fly out of an American airport due to the risk of being detained by federal officials in the U.S. As for driving, it would take more than 30 hours from Los Angeles to Michoacán, and involve passing through some dangerous parts of Mexico. Instead, he decided to drive across the border into Tijuana and then catch a flight to Michoacán.

Daisy collected the documents her father might need, like his birth certificate and plane ticket, and Freedman helped start a GoFundMe campaign to supplement González’s depleted savings and offered to drive him across the border herself, with the help of her own dad.

It took weeks to finalize their plans.

It’s hard to know how many people have ended up in González’s position, according to Dagen, at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights.

She used to reassure immigrants that their rights usually protected them from immediate detention and deportation, and that the government would for the most part follow the law. She says she can no longer make such promises.

“It is hard to tell people that they have constitutional and statutory rights and that it is very likely those rights will not actually be honored,” Dagen said.

The high-profile targeting of immigrants and the subversion of their rights has pushed many to flee the country, she said. The Department of Homeland Security claims, without providing evidence, that some 1.6 million people have fled the country.

While some, including González, have adopted the Trump administration’s preferred language of “self-deportation” to describe their departure under duress, Dagen notes that it does not define any sort of formal process; it is just people leaving without having any legal framework for returning to the United States.

In an ad released by DHS, Secretary Kristi Noem claims undocumented immigrants who choose to leave by their own accord “may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream.”

But Dagen said such promises are being made in bad faith and used to convince people that this supposed “process” is their best chance to avoid violent arrests by federal agents.

González spent most of his last day at home with his family, savoring their last moments together and packing his things. When Freedman and her own father arrived to pick up González, his family was with him in the living room, weeping. González’s preschool-aged granddaughter had wrapped herself around his leg, begging him not to leave.

After the most difficult goodbyes of his life, he climbed into the Freedmans’ backseat, alongside Daisy and his daughter-in-law, and set off for the border.

Daisy clutched her father’s arm for much of the drive down to Tijuana. Even as they made their way toward Baja California, González remained terrified that immigration officials would somehow nab him before he left the country.

As mariachi music played through the car speakers, they reminisced warmly about González’s years in California, the only place Daisy has ever lived.

There had been times in the last three decades when González desperately wanted to make short-term visits to Mexico — his sister died of cancer near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, his father passed away a few months later and less than a year after that, his mother followed. He had longed to return to see them in person or, at the very least, to attend their funerals. But he couldn’t be sure that if he crossed the border, he would be able to return.

As they approached the border in August, the atmosphere in the car grew silent. They saw a multicolored welcome sign approaching: “Tijuana México, aquí empieza la patria” — here begins the homeland. In the car, they were all in tears.

When they crossed, González could think of only one thing to say — something he’d waited to exclaim during his months hunkered down in his Pasadena home: “Fuck you, ICE.”

Homeland?

At Tijuana International Airport, González entered security, snaked his way around the belt stanchions and disappeared into his terminal. After a three-hour flight, he arrived in Michoacán, which was a very different place from the one he left in the mid-1990s. Some friends had moved away, others had died.

Today, González lives in the town of Pátzcuaro with an adult daughter from his first marriage whom he hadn’t seen in person in decades. Four of his seven surviving siblings — two brothers and two sisters — are helping him settle into a new life, sharing food with him when they can.

From there, he laments what he left behind in California.

“Half of my life stayed there,” González said during a recent follow-up phone interview from Pátzcuaro. “I cried when I said goodbye to my family, I cried when I arrived in Mexico, I cried the entire way here,” he said.

“When I think about it, I still cry sometimes."

When Daisy opens the front door of her Pasadena home, she still half-expects to see González welcoming her. Instead he is a 1,770-mile drive away, in a Mexican state that the Trump administration warns is too dangerous for Americans to travel to due to widespread violence from “terrorist groups, cartels, gangs and criminal organizations.”

To try to bridge the distance, Daisy and her father speak on the phone nearly every day. He tells her that it rains a lot in Michoacán, and that he misses her. They talk about the news from the U.S. — even though he doesn’t think he will ever be allowed to return.

He’s not sure if he’ll ever feel at home in Michoacán the way he did in Pasadena. He looks forward to a time when his California family might visit him. He hopes to find a new local restaurant job, even if it is certain to pay far less, so he can one day afford his own home in town.

But González no longer fears that masked men with the full support of the White House might abduct him. What keeps him up at night now is knowing that millions of other people are going through what he did in the U.S., attempting to live decent lives while the government treats them like violent criminals.

Copyright 2025 Capital & Main.

The Trump administration has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from next year's calendar of entrance fee-free days for national parks and added President Trump's birthday to the list, according to the National Park Service, as the administration continues to push back against a reckoning of the country's racist history on federal lands.

In addition to Trump's birthday — which coincides with Flag Day (June 14) — the updated calendar of fee-free dates includes the 110th anniversary of the NPS (August 25), Constitution Day (September 17) and President Teddy Roosevelt's birthday (October 27). The changes will take effect starting January 1.

Non-U.S. residents will still be required to pay entrance fees on those dates under the new "America-first pricing" policy. At 11 of some of the country's most popular national parks, international visitors will be charged an extra $100, on top of the standard entrance fee, and the annual pass for non-residents will go up to $250. The annual pass for residents will be $80.

The move follows a July executive order from the White House that called to increase fees applied to non-American visitors to national parks and grant citizens and residents "preferential treatment with respect to any remaining recreational access rules, including permitting or lottery rules."

The Department of the Interior, which oversees NPS, called the new fee-exempted dates "patriotic fee-free days," in an announcement that lauded the changes as "Trump's commitment to making national parks more accessible, more affordable and more efficient for the American people."

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement: "These policies ensure that U.S. taxpayers, who already support the National Park System, continue to enjoy affordable access, while international visitors contribute their fair share to maintaining and improving our parks for future generations."

The new calendar follows the Trump administration's previous moves to reshape U.S. history by asking patrons of national parks to flag any signs at sites deemed to cast a negative light on past or living Americans.
Copyright 2025 NPR

If you found out your neighbor had a past criminal conviction, your knee-jerk reaction might be that you’d want them relocated.

But what if that person committed a burglary in their late teens, served years in state prison, turned their life around, and now mentors at-risk youth?

Do the details matter? Researchers found that they do.

A new poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research examines California voters’ attitudes toward due process for immigrants with criminal convictions during the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on unauthorized immigration. The survey also examined support for how tax dollars are spent and Californians’ views on the state’s sanctuary policies.

It found bipartisan support for ensuring that immigrants facing deportation receive due process, including ones with criminal records.

“This survey shows that there’s clear concern about the current administration’s approach to immigration enforcement,” said Sara Knight, a research director at Goodwin Simon Strategic Research. “I’m not surprised by the results, but I am heartened to see how strong the support for due process is and the growing frustration with treating people inhumanely in our immigration system.”

President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations that targeted criminals, among other things, and he has made good on that. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested more than 160,608 noncitizens nationwide with criminal convictions or pending charges, since his inauguration.

The Trump administration has sought to expand the use of “expedited removal,” which allows immigration officers to remove certain non-citizens, like those convicted of crimes, from the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge.

Researchers say this latest poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, released to CalMatters this week, also reflects waning support, even among a small majority of Republicans for the harshest immigration enforcement practices. It showed 84% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 54% of Republicans agreed that “even if someone does have a record, they deserve due process and the chance to have their case heard by a judge before being deported.”

The poll was commissioned by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, both pro-immigrant organizations. Goodwin Simon Strategic Research describes itself on its website as an “independent opinion research firm.” Researchers wrote the survey questions and polled more than 1,200 self-identified voters. Knight said the partisan divide among those polled mirrored the party-affiliation split in the electorate. The margin of error was 3 points.

Some other recent polls echo similar conclusions released in recent weeks, including one released last week by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab that found one-third of Latino voters who supported Trump now regret their choice. Another public opinion poll by the nonpartisan research firm Public Policy Institute of California found 71% of Californians surveyed said they disapproved of the job ICE is doing. And, a CNN exit poll after the Proposition 50 redistricting election on Nov. 4 found that about three-quarters of California voters said they’re dissatisfied with or angry about the way things are going in the U.S., and 6 in 10 said the Trump administration’s actions on immigration enforcement have gone too far.

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, pointed to other recent national polls to argue the public supports Trump’s immigration policies.

“President Trump and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Kristi) Noem are delivering on the American people’s mandate to deport illegal aliens, and the latest polls show that support for the America First agenda has not wavered — including a New York Times poll that nearly 8 in 10 Americans support deporting illegal aliens with criminal records,” McLaughlin said in a written statement.

“The American people, the law, and common sense are on our side, and we will not stop until law and order is restored after Biden’s open border chaos flooded our country with the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” she continued.

From prison to ICE

In the more recent Goodwin Simon Strategic Research poll, 61% of voters surveyed said they want California’s prison system to stop directly handing immigrants over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.

The state’s sanctuary law does not apply to immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes. State prisons have transferred to ICE more than 9,500 people with criminal records since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, according to data released to CalMatters. So far in 2025, ICE has picked up 1,217 inmates directly from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the data shows.

The corrections department also provides ICE with information that helps the agency locate, arrest, and deport people who are not directly transferred. CalMatters obtained and reviewed more than 27,000 pages of emails between state prison employees and ICE. The emails show prison employees regularly communicate with ICE about individuals in state custody, including U.S. citizens. They often share personal details about their families, visitors, and phone calls. Often, these family members have no criminal records and are U.S. citizens

Newsom, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, and Speaker Robert Rivas have all denounced ICE’s broader deportation efforts. But all three have also indicated some level of support for having federal immigration officials remove noncitizens with prior convictions for violent crimes from the community.

The governor has stated he would veto legislation that seeks to restrict the state prison system’s ability to coordinate with federal immigration authorities for the deportation of felons.

‘We may be deporting the wrong people’

Goodwin Simon researchers found that voters’ opinions change when they find out more details about the personal circumstances of a noncitizen with a past criminal conviction, even for violent crime. Pollsters gave two narratives to voters.

One was about a man who was brought to the United States from Mexico as a child. He got into a fight in his early 20s that left someone injured. The man was sentenced to seven years in state prison, where he turned his life around by taking college classes and helping other inmates get their high school diplomas. When he got out of prison, he was deported to Mexico before an immigration judge could decide on his case.

The other narrative was about a person closely connected to a man whose family fled genocide in Cambodia when he was a baby. In the U.S., the man was the lookout for a robbery when he was a teenager and served 30 years in state prison. Upon his release, prison officials turned him over to ICE.

“We may be deporting the wrong people. Although this last person did commit a crime, he has served his time and is now a valuable member of society, so it would be hard to say for sure if a person ever committed a crime deserves to be sent back. That is why the due process is important,” one Republican voter from Sacramento responded to the poll. She shifted her opinion from the view that people with past criminal convictions should be automatically deported to favoring a judge reviewing each individual case after hearing the narratives.

After voters reviewed both pro- and anti-messaging and the two stories, support for having an immigration judge review individual cases before deportation increased from 84% to 90% among Democrats; from 61% to 74% among independents, but it dropped from 54% to 51% among Republicans. Central Coast voters and Republican women voters increased support for due process by 9 points after hearing the stories.

The European Union has announced a fine of $140 million against Elon Musk's X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for several failures to comply with rules governing large digital platforms. A European Commission spokesperson said the fine against X's holding company was due to the platform's misleading use of a blue check mark to identify verified users, a poorly functioning advertising repository, and a failure to provide effective data access for researchers.

Europe's preference had not been to fine X, said the spokesperson, Thomas Regnier, as he drew a contrast with the Chinese-owned platform TikTok. Regnier announced Friday that TikTok had separately offered concessions that would allow it to avoid such penalties.

"If you engage constructively with the Commission, we settle cases," Regnier said at a press conference in Brussels. "If you do not, we take action."

The possibility that X would face financial penalties in Europe had drawn significant political fire, not only from Musk but also from others in Washington, D.C., over the past two years since the European Commission began its investigation.

"Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship," Vice President J.D. Vance wrote on X on Thursday. "The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage."

In July 2024, in a set of preliminary findings, the European Commission formally accused X — which serves more than 100 million users within the EU — of several violations. These included its failure to meet transparency mandates, obstructing researchers' access to data and misleading users by converting the blue verification badge into a paid subscription feature.

Musk has long stated his intention to legally challenge any EU sanctions, rather than make concessions to resolve the investigation.

Nonetheless, the company could have faced far higher financial penalties, with European authorities able under new legislation — known as the Digital Services Act — to fine offenders 6% of their worldwide annual revenue, which in this case could have included several other of Musk's companies, including SpaceX.

The fine announcement follows months of accusations from activists and trade experts that authorities in Brussels were deliberately easing up on enforcement to appease U.S. President Donald Trump. Musk was a prominent supporter of Trump's campaign and spent several months this past spring serving as an administration adviser and the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative.

The willingness to take on Musk's business empire could serve as a critical test of the EU's determination, especially in light of Trump's previous threats of tariffs over the bloc's fines against U.S. technology giants.

The confrontation highlights a growing division over the concept of digital sovereignty, which has transformed long-standing allies into competitors as Europe strives to establish itself as the global authority for digital regulation, and the Trump administration pushes back against perceived curbs on U.S. companies' profits and freedom of expression.

So, experts warn, this direct punitive action against Musk's businesses carries the risk of U.S. retaliation, even though the EU remains heavily dependent on American technology for a range of sectors.

The United States is already leveraging some of these concerns about free speech as grounds for denying U.S. visas to certain individuals.

The Trump administration also has consistently argued that the EU unfairly targets U.S. technology companies with severe financial penalties and burdensome regulations, equating these measures to tariffs that justify trade retaliation. Just last week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated that the EU must revise its digital regulations to secure a deal aimed at reducing steel and aluminum tariffs.

The Commission denied again Friday any connection between the trade negotiations with the U.S. and the implementation of its technology rulebooks, any targeting of American firms or any kind of infringement on freedom of expression.

"Our digital legislation has nothing to do with censorship," said Commission spokesperson Regnier. "We adopt the final decision, not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdictions based on their color or their country of origin."

Despite the Trump administration's pressure, the EU has proceeded with the enforcement of its digital antitrust rules, recently imposing fines of $584 million on Apple Inc. and $233 million on Meta Platforms Inc.

It also has issued substantial penalties against other corporations, including over $8 billion total in fines against Alphabet Inc.'s Google over several years and a separate directive for Apple to repay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland for providing unfair state aid.

Other potentially more serious concerns about X's management of illegal content, election-related misinformation and the utilization of Community Notes have not yet progressed to the preliminary stage in a separate investigation by the European Commission.

It’s only been a month since the federal government shutdown caused the 5.5 million Californians who use CalFresh — the state’s version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — to see their payments delayed.

And although payments of SNAP (formerly referred to as food stamps) have restarted, another holiday season is around the corner, putting extra strain on folks who are food insecure in the Bay Area.

One positive development: The CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program — a state program offering SNAP recipients up to $60 of free produce each month — has restarted as of November.

The program, which first launched in 2023, is dependent on state-allocated annual funds that are spent until they’re used up, and the 2024 cycle ran out for CalFresh users back in January of this year.

But this year, the program has received an injection of $36 million, which is projected to last until summer 2026.

In previous years, the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program has made “a real, real difference to so many families,” before its funds were used up, said Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), who chairs the state Legislature’s Human Services Committee with oversight of CalFresh policy.

But despite that, he said, “still only a small percentage of all CalFresh-eligible families are using it.”

While only six stores in the Bay Area are participating in the program right now — almost all of them in the South Bay — anyone receiving CalFresh benefits can automatically receive $60 worth of fresh produce each month if they’re able to reach one of these locations.

Keep reading for how the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program works, where it’s available and how to redeem your money in-store.

And if you don’t need this information yourself right now, consider sharing it with someone else who might: “One in five Californians suffer from food insecurity,” Lee said. “So statistically speaking, you are, or you know someone who is struggling with food.”

Can anyone on CalFresh use the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program?

Yes: If you receive any CalFresh (SNAP) benefits, you have automatic access to the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program at participating stores (see below).

You don’t need to apply for anything, as your EBT card itself is your proof of eligibility.

Can I use the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program in any store that accepts EBT?

No: You’ll need to visit one of the specific stores participating in the program.

In the Bay Area, almost all of these stores are in Santa Clara County:

• Santa Fe Foods, 860 White Road, San José
• Arteaga’s Food Center, 204 Willow St., San José
• Arteaga’s Food Center, 1003 Lincoln Ave., San José
• Arteaga’s Food Center, 2620 Alum Rock Ave., San José
• Arteaga’s Food Center, 6906 Automall Pkwy., Gilroy

In Alameda County, you can use the program at:

• Santa Fe Foods, 7356 Thornton Ave., Newark

There are also participating stores in Monterey and Salinas counties, and several in the Los Angeles area. See a full list of grocery stores participating in the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program.

How do I use the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program in the store?

First, make sure you’re in one of the stores participating in the program — mistakes can happen — and that you’ve brought your EBT card with you.

Next, do your shopping as normal, and pick up fresh fruits and vegetables as part of your trip. You don’t have to separate the produce or pay for it in a different transaction.

At the register, tell the cashier you’d like to use your EBT card to pay for your shopping, like you usually would. When it comes to the fresh fruits and vegetables in your cart, you’ll initially see the costs of those particular items come off your EBT funds — but then those funds will be immediately returned, making that produce effectively free at the register.

Another way of seeing it: If your cart amounts to $15 of EBT-eligible food, including $5 of produce, you’ll initially see $15 debited from your card on the screen — but then you’ll see the instant rebate of $5 for your produce, meaning your final receipt will only be $10.

“People don’t have to enroll and do anything different; they don’t have to keep track of some paper coupon or some other card,” said Eli Zigas, executive director of Fullwell: the Bay Area nonprofit advocacy organization partnering with the state to administer the program this year.

“It’s all built into the EBT card at the participating locations,” he said.

And while you can get these instant rebates for up to $60 worth of produce each month, remember: You don’t have to “spend” that $60 up in one transaction. Your EBT will automatically keep track of your produce purchases and just stop issuing the instant rebates once you’ve hit that $60 cap for the month.

Does the amount of produce I can buy using the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program depend on how much I’m receiving in CalFresh benefits?

No: Every CalFresh household can get up to $60 of free fresh fruits and vegetables with their EBT card, regardless of the amount of benefits they receive. It’s a flat amount for all SNAP users in the state.

My EBT balance is at $0 right now. Can I still use the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program?

No: To get the instant rebate on money spent on fresh fruit and vegetables, you’ll first need to actually spend those funds using your EBT card — even though you’ll immediately get the money back onto that card.

If you don’t have any money on your EBT card available, you’ll have to wait until your CalFresh funds are reloaded next month to be able to use the program again. But remember that if your EBT funds are running low, you can still spend a smaller amount — or whatever’s available on your card — on fresh fruit and vegetables and receive the money back instantly, until you’ve maxed out that $60-per-month cap.

Is there a deadline to use the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program?

The $36 million approved in the most recent state budget by the California legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom for the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program “is three and a half times more money than this program has ever had previously for an annual cycle,” Zigas said.

In previous years, Lee said, the funding would last for different periods “because the program was so wildly successful and oversubscribed that it would run out for a while.”

So what about 2026? “We estimate, based on previous usage, that the program will have funds to run through the summer,” Zigas said.

But after summer arrives, Zigas said, “it’s all going to depend on what the usage is, and whether there’s renewed funding.” So while you still have many months to try the program, you shouldn’t wait too long — not least because each month that passes will bring another $60 for you to spend on produce.

In the wake of the SNAP delays caused by the government shutdown, “I think people have seen recently more than ever before how important CalFresh is and how much people are struggling to put food on the table,” Zigas said. “We would love to see this program not only operate continuously all year long without interruption, but also expand — because it’s a limited number of grocery stores right now offering this program, and it could be so much bigger.”

Is the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program the same as Market Match, and can I use both?

Market Match is a statewide program that distributes funds to farmers’ markets across California, allowing people using CalFresh to “match” an amount of their choosing from their EBT card at the market with tokens to spend at that location — essentially doubling their funds.

Market Match is a separate state program from the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program, but people on CalFresh can use both programs.

Learn more about the Market Match program, and watch KQED’s video on how to use your EBT card at your local market.

Why does the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Program focus on fresh produce specifically?

The program’s focus on fresh fruit and vegetables “is recognizing that CalFresh benefits, as good as they are, are often insufficient for people to afford the food that they want for their families,” Zigas said.

This is especially true of fresh fruits and vegetables, he said, “which are harder to justify buying when you have less income because they’re not shelf stable, and you don’t know if your kids are necessarily going to like them.

“People would like to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and often just don’t feel like they can make that choice — or afford it,” he said.