Advocates blast Trump campaign against in-state tuition for immigrants

Immigration advocacy groups held a virtual press conference Wednesday denouncing the Justice Department's lawsuits against 24 states, Washington D.C. and the University of Delaware over laws letting some noncitizen students pay in-state college tuition. Courts have already struck down such laws in Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, though a federal judge this week upheld Virginia's version, and suits remain pending in eighteen other jurisdictions.

Groups including MALDEF, the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, and TheDream.US argue the campaign strips affordable college access from thousands of students and called it a coordinated effort against tuition equity. The DOJ's legal theory rests on a 1996 federal law barring states from giving noncitizens tuition benefits not available to out-of-state citizens, a statute MALDEF's Thomas Saenz notes predates every tuition-equity law it's now being used to dismantle.

Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate has defended the push by saying colleges cannot treat American students as second-class citizens. Saenz counters that no prior administration ever argued the 1996 law preempted these state laws, despite decades of them being on the books.

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