WASHINGTON — A coalition of 20 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Trump administration’s demand that their states turn over personal data of people enrolled in a federally funded food assistance program, fearing the information will be used to aid mass deportations.

The data demand comes as the Trump administration has sought to collect private information on mostly lower-income people who may be in the country illegally. It has already ordered the Internal Revenue Service and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to share private information with the Department of Homeland Security to aid in deportation efforts.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture told states last week that it had until Wednesday to hand over the data for those enrolled in its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which serves more than 42 million people nationwide. The USDA said the data will help it combat waste, fraud and abuse.

The states’ lawsuit seeks an injunction to block the data transfer. In the meantime, state attorneys general in the SNAP lawsuit said they will not disclose what they consider to be private information of recipients — including their immigration status, birthdates and home addresses — because they believe it would be a violation of privacy laws.

“It’s a bait-and-switch of the worst kind,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a Monday afternoon news conference announcing the lawsuit. “SNAP recipients provided this information to get help feeding their families, not to be entered into a government surveillance database or be used as targets in the president’s inhumane immigration agenda.”

In May, the department announced it was seeking the data as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order to obtain data from state programs to help root out fraud and waste.