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| -Land of the Free |
| Trump DOJ intensifies push to stop tuition discounts for illegal aliens |
| 2026-08-16 |
[CampusReform]
The administration argues that the policies violate federal law by allowing illegal aliens to receive lower tuition rates and other benefits that are unavailable to U.S. citizens from outside those states. "This is a simple matter of federal law: Colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens," Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said in a Justice Department statement. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward similarly accused New York, Connecticut, and Vermont of placing illegal aliens ahead of American citizens. "Congress long ago made clear that states cannot put illegal aliens over our nation’s own citizens," Woodward said. The difference in tuition can amount to discounts of thousands of dollars for illegal aliens that American out-of-state students are not eligible for. In New York, illegal aliens pay roughly $7,700 annually at State University of New York campuses, while American students from other states pay about $17,730. The administration has already secured several victories in its effort to eliminate similar policies. States including Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas ended policies providing illegal aliens in-state tuition benefits unavailable to out-of-state Americans, while a federal judge in Illinois ruled last month that the state’s in-state tuition benefits violated the Supremacy Clause and were unconstitutional. The DOJ is now appealing a March ruling by Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez, who dismissed the administration’s challenge to Minnesota’s tuition law granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens. The Justice Department maintains that the policy still violates federal law by extending education benefits to illegal aliens that are unavailable to some U.S. citizens, and has taken the case to the Eighth Circuit. The administration is weighing its options in another major higher-education case as well. On Thursday, Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns dismissed DOJ’s Title VI antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard University. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the department "disagree[s] with the ruling" and is "assessing next steps." The four-page decision does not resolve the DOJ’s related claim seeking recovery of federal grant money Harvard received while it was allegedly violating Title VI. Stearns acknowledged that the government had advanced a breach-of-contract theory for recovering previously granted funds, but said he was "assuming without deciding" whether that remedy was available and expressly declined to address the merits of the issue. That leaves the administration’s next move unclear, while preserving a potentially important legal avenue if DOJ appeals or pursues another route to recover taxpayer funds from Harvard. The Trump administration still has time to advance its higher-education agenda before the November midterm elections, but the political environment could become significantly more difficult if Republicans lose control of the House, Senate, or both. While DOJ has secured significant victories, the rulings in Minnesota and Harvard show that judges appointed by Democratic presidents have emerged as a significant obstacle to parts of Trump’s higher-education agenda. The next phase may depend not only on how many lawsuits the administration files, but on which legal theories survive and whether unresolved questions like the one left open in Harvard give DOJ another path forward. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |