A sign for SNAP -- the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- is seen at the entrance to a Big Lots store in Portland, Oregon.

It’s well understood by now, or should be: We can trust the Trump administration, as the saying goes, about as far as we can throw it.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is demanding that states turn over personal information on people who receive food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. They want names, addresses and immigration status. And they’re threatening to stop sending SNAP administrative funds to states that won’t comply.

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They say their goal is to root out fraud. The real fraud is the suggestion that the federal government has the right to this confidential data – it doesn’t – and that it wouldn’t use the information in its cruel, relentless pursuit of immigrants; it almost certainly would.

Federal law states that SNAP recipients’ personal information can be used only for purposes of administering the program, with few exceptions. This is the........

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