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Dive Brief:
A federal judge on Wednesday signed off on a joint motion from the U.S. Department of Justice and Texas to strike down the state’s 24-year-old law offering in-state tuition rates to undocumented students.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtoncalled the law a “discriminatory and un-American provision” in a statement and claimed victory for the court order holding it to be unconstitutional.
The change, effective immediately, will likely affect tens of thousands of Texas students. One report estimated that 59,000 undocumented students in the U.S. attended Texas colleges in 2021.
Dive Insight:
More than two decades ago, the Texas Legislature passed a bipartisan bill removing immigration status as an eligibility factor for in-state tuition. If an undocumented student attended a Texas high school, graduated or received a GED and met “the minimum residency, academic, and registration criteria,” they could enroll at a public state college at the in-state rate.
Then-Gov. Rick Perry signed the bill into law, making Texas the first state with such a policy.
Since then, 24 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted policies that allow undocumented students to attend at least some public colleges at in-state rates. Florida’s law is set to be revoked effective July 1.
DOJ sued Texas over its policy on Wednesday, with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi arguing that it illegally offered undocumented students benefits not provided to all U.S. citizens.
“The Justice Department will relentlessly fight to vindicate federal law and ensure that U.S. citizens are not treated like second-class citizens anywhere in the country,” she said in a statement.
Texas voiced support for DOJ’s lawsuit soon after it was filed. But in the short time prior to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s sign-off, student advocates questioned the legal standing of DOJ’s allegations.
“To suggest that undocumented students are receiving benefits denied to citizens is false and misleading,” Monica Andrade, director of state policy and legal strategy at The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said in a Wednesday statement.
“In fact, any U.S. citizen who meets the same criteria — such as attending and graduating from a Texas high school — qualifies for in-state tuition. These requirements apply regardless of immigration status,” she said.
Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of the undocumented youth advocacy group TheDream.US, called the lawsuit “harmful and self-defeating for the future of Texas.”
Average in-state costs for Texas public colleges are below the national average, $8,195 versus $9,750 in 2022-23, respectively,according to the Education Data Initiative.
But for out-of-state students, tuition is significantly higher. At the University of Texas-Austin, for example, out-of-state students paid $48,712 in 2024-2025, compared to $13,576 for state residents.
Prior to Bondi’s lawsuit, the Texas Legislature this session had considered a bill to repeal in-state tuition eligibility for undocumented students. The proposal, which did not advance, would have also required such students who had already received in-state tuition to pay the difference within 30 days of being notified or risk having their diplomas withheld.
LOS ANGELES — Scattered among the shrubs on the southern border lie belongings migrants left behind — toothbrushes, water bottles, baseball caps. Some of the owners forged north, crossing the boundary undetected. Others were apprehended or succumbed to dehydration, drowning or one of the unimaginable dangers in the harsh desert that straddles Mexico and the United States.
Angélica Reyes survived. At nine months old, she made the journey that could have claimed her life just as it started.
Since 1994, approximately 10,000 migrants have died in the borderlands. That year, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. Designed to open trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the now-defunct policy has faced criticism for depressing Mexican wages. Their income flatlining, Reyes said, her parents left the city of Guadalajara, in the western part of Mexico, and headed with her to Los Angeles. They did not have authorization to live in the United States.
Reyes is now 32, though she remembers knowing she was undocumented as early as first grade.
“My mom was very cognizant of the discrimination and the obstacles that I would face throughout my life,” she said. “She made it clear, like, ‘You can’t mess up. You need to be twice as good to get half of the respect. You need to really prove that you earned your spot.’”
To do that, Reyes earned the good grades that set her up to become a history teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is one of about 15,000 teachers — and among the more than 835,000 undocumented people — who have received temporary permission to live, work and study in the United States through an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Women represent over half of DACA recipients, whose future in this country has been under threat by legal challenges to the program’s existence and the anti-immigration agenda of President Donald Trump.
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If DACA ends, the goal of ongoing litigation, 700 education personnel, including teachers and teacher aides, would lose their jobs each month for two years as their work permits are revoked, according to FWD.us, an immigration reform organization. In California, the state with the most DACA recipients, 200 educators would lose their jobs monthly. In Texas, 100 would.
DACA-recipient teachers relate firsthand to the estimated 620,000 undocumented K-1 2 students, who confide in them about their experiences in immigrant families. They show youth that regardless of legal status, it’s possible to attain one’s professional goals. Many of these teachers are also activists, fighting for their students, themselves and other marginalized people. They see themselves as assets to schools.
“My immigration status inspires both my undocumented and documented students because they know all the obstacles that are faced by folks with my immigration status can be overcome,” Reyes said. “They know that if I could do it, that’s something that they could do as well.”
Without undocumented teachers, educator shortages across states could worsen. California has spent about $1.6 billion since the 2016-17 school year to tackle its teacher shortage. Still, the state issued 11 percent fewer teaching credentials between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Last year, it enacted legislation to eliminate barriers to entry, dropping a standardized test teaching candidates had to pass to demonstrate competence in math, reading and writing. But since undocumented immigrants aren’t widely perceived to be career professionals, the fact that schoolchildren nationwide depend on them has received scant attention in the broader immigration debate.
Maria Miranda, elementary vice president of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) labor union, said undocumented teachers “bring a different perspective to the table, a different skill set.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teacher labor union, said DACA recipients in classrooms have strengthened the United States.
“They are role models, like all teachers, and should be treated as such, but instead, they are made to feel uncertain and fearful as their protections are challenged in court and as the Trump administration promotes mass deportations, even from sensitive locations like schools that were once considered off limits,” Weingarten said. “Immigration reform can’t be used as an excuse to rip teachers out of classrooms, where they are so desperately needed.”
Reyes at 1 year old with her father. (Angelica Reyes)
When Reyes was about to register for the SAT during her senior year in high school, one misinformed guidance counselor asked her why she planned to take the college entrance exam, insisting that higher education was off limits to undocumented students.
“I was devastated. It broke my heart,” Reyes said. “I remember crying and telling my mom, ‘I worked hard, for what?’”
Since 2001, however, California has extended access to in-state college tuition to undocumented students who have lived there long term. Unaware of this law and under the assumption that her counselor was correct, Reyes missed the deadline for the SAT and for the application to University of California schools, so she enrolled in a community college she could afford, a common path for many undocumented immigrants.
Then, in 2011, a state law was enacted that made her cry tears of gratitude: the California DREAM Act. The policy allows undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before they were 16 to obtain financial aid if they’ve earned qualifying credits at California schools. These young people have been nicknamed Dreamers after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a 2001 federal bill that would have given them legal status had it succeeded.
Reyes said that when she decided to apply to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a community college counselor took in her light brown skin and wavy black mane and without so much as seeing the 4.0 GPA in her transcript, told her to apply somewhere less competitive.
“I’m a competitive student!” Reyes recalled balking. “She opened my chart and she was, like, ‘Oh, you actually are.’ Her tune changed so quickly. It was really infuriating because if I had believed her, like many students believe counselors, I would have not gone to UCLA.”
In college, Reyes had to make a choice about her career path. Her research project on youth activism at Abraham Lincoln High School, where she graduated in 2010, had drawn her to education. “I realized that’s where I was needed,” she said.
It was at Lincoln High in March 1968 that students spearheaded the protests known as the Chicano Blowouts or East Los Angeles Walkouts. With signs stating “School Not Prison” and “We Are Not Dirty Mexicans,” almost 15,000 youth from Lincoln and other schools in historically Mexican-American East L.A. walked out of classes for a week to protest their substandard education.
Chicano student walkouts in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles during the 1968 blowouts. (LAPL)
Back then, students could be paddled for speaking Spanish, and with few advanced courses at Eastside schools, they were routinely steered to vocational classes like auto shop. These inequities contributed to a 60 percent dropout rate in the area. Jailed for their activism against these circumstances, the teenagers garnered community support that ushered in sweeping policy changes — bilingual instruction, ethnic studies and more Latino teachers.
Today, the carnicerías, bungalow homes and palm trees along North Broadway Avenue, leading to 93 acres of green hills, offer no hint of the past tumult, but a mural at Lincoln commemorates the walkouts of nearly six decades ago.
Through her research, which also explored youth activism of the 2010s, Reyes learned that contemporary Lincoln High students continued to have unmet needs, such as support applying for college financial aid or accessing legal services as members of immigrant households. So when Lincoln High teachers asked if she wanted to develop a space to serve students, Reyes threw herself into the effort. The Paula Crisostomo Dream Center — named after a lead activist of the Chicano Blowouts and the inspiration for the 2006 film “Walkout” — opened at Lincoln in 2015.
“We established programming for immigrant students, for immigrant parents. We did immigrant and educational history,” Reyes said. “It’s still a resource for students at Lincoln, and we’ve expanded it to several other schools.”
Working at the Dream Center for three years convinced her that teaching was the best way to reach undocumented and marginalized youth. Rather than dismiss them, as she had been dismissed by school counselors, she would inspire students to excel academically regardless of legal status. In 2012, four years before she graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and six years before she earned her master’s in education from the university, DACA enabled undocumented students like herself to become career professionals.
Reyes surrounded by family at her high school graduation. (Angelica Reyes)
It’s complicated: Those two words capture Reyes’ feelings about DACA. Although the program allowed her to teach, she has long viewed it as flawed, exploitative and a “constant reminder” she isn’t “fully accepted.”
DACA stems from the activism of undocumented college students frustrated that the DREAM Act failed and that their immigration status would limit their potential, said Jennifer R. Nájera, author of “Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education.” Fighting for immigrant rights, they found a purpose.
Like the DREAM Act, DACA was reserved for young people who came to the United States as children and didn’t have criminal histories. “They had to graduate from high school or college or go to the military, show ‘good moral character,’” said Nájera, an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Instead of citizenship, Obama’s executive order “provided temporary relief from deportation, a two-year relief specifically, that could be renewed, and a work permit, which was a big deal.”
While DACA recipients cherished their professional opportunities, some contended that the policy cast them as second-class citizens, Nájera said.
That includes Reyes.
“I knew it was a Band-Aid,” she said. “In fact, when I first started teaching, my DACA expired because of an issue with the application. They had asked me if I was in a gang, and apparently I didn’t check off the X hard enough, so I wasn’t hired at the beginning of the year. I remember feeling this immense frustration.”
Los Angeles Unified employs about 300 DACA-recipient school personnel, according to Miranda of the UTLA labor union. As Reyes’ teaching career started, DACA weathered the first of multiple legal challenges. Trump rescinded the program during his first term, a move the Supreme Court later blocked; at the time, Reyes told her students about possibly losing her job. Since then, she has endured several other threats to DACA , though she’s now pained to tell her students that the program isn’t accepting new applicants.
DACA, she said, must be replaced with a sustainable alternative.
In a December interview, Trump said, “We’re going to have to do something with” DACA recipients. “They were brought into this country many years ago” and “in many cases, they’ve become successful.”
But that sympathy has been absent from his immigration policies since he resumed office. He has issued an executive order prohibiting undocumented college students from receiving in-state tuition. He has also lifted restrictions on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as churches, hospitals and schools, prompting parents nationwide to keep kids out of class.
A protester waves the Mexican flag during a demonstration for immigration rights outside Los Angeles City Hall on February 5, 2025. (Qian Weizhong/Getty Images)
“A lot of times, the children are U.S. citizens and the parents are concerned,” Reyes said. “But I’ve had students who shared that their parents are U.S. citizens, and they’re still scared because they know that U.S. citizens are also caught up in these raids. So, this isn’t about criminality. It’s about the targeting of Brown folks.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal authorities reportedly detained or deported at least 10 U.S. citizens, including children, in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.
Last month, the California state superintendent presented Senate Bill 48 to limit ICE appearances at schools as absences have spiked — and schools could lose millions of dollars since their funding is tied to average daily student attendance. About half of California children belong to families that include at least one immigrant parent, while one in five live in mixed-status families with at least one undocumented parent.
“It’s very taxing emotionally for our members and our students,” Miranda said of ICE enforcement. “We have students at the elementary level who are terrified of seeing anyone in uniform. Some of them are so young that they don’t know the difference between the police and immigration. It’s a very scary moment.”
When Trump targeted DACA during his first term, Reyes warned in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece that disbanding the program could upend public education. But now she says her students deserve more than DACA’s “breadcrumbs.”
“We need to fight for something new because my kids want to be chefs and doctors and lawyers, but they’re being held back by their immigration status,” she said. “It’s excruciating in two ways: One, I want my students to have the opportunities that they deserve to serve the community. And, two, I don’t know when I’m going to be taken from them because of my own uncertainty.”
For now, she knows that her presence makes a difference at her high school. Los Angeles Unified has an immigrant student body of about 30,000 students, according to UTLA. Of those, one in four is undocumented. After Reyes shared her immigration status with students during a recent lunchtime conversation, she said a ninth grader confessed that she planned to quit school because she, too, is undocumented. Learning Reyes managed to become a teacher made the girl reconsider.
“It was really beautiful to see that, like it reignited her hope to have a bright future,” Reyes said.
Although the risks of revealing her status frighten her, her conscience compels her to, Reyes said. She quoted Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata: “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Staying silent as the president attacks immigrants would make it hard for Reyes to face the youth in her life — her son, especially.
Reyes after receiving her master’s degree in education from UCLA. (Angelica Reyes)
Whenever a state turned red on Election Night, Nathan Reyes felt his anxiety shoot up. Still, he held out hope Kamala Harris would win. Then the Electoral College math made it plain: Donald Trump would be president again.
Although he’s a U.S. citizen, Nathan wondered what lay ahead for his undocumented relatives under a president promising mass deportations.
“I feel worried for them because if they get deported, what am I going to do?” he asked. “Where am I going to stay?”
So, he began to plan. He and his family would “have to pick our poison” — stay in a country hostile to their presence or self-deport together to Mexico regardless of citizenship status.
That her son, with a pile of ringlets and a round cherubic face, was even considering these options stunned Reyes. Nathan is in seventh grade.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this kid is 12,’” Angélica Reyes said. “Why is he talking about this?’”
Rummaging through a bin of childhood possessions in her mother’s bedroom last year, Reyes found a poem she wrote in fourth grade about her fear of police. Her parents were street food vendors, an occupation California criminalized until 2018, so Reyes realized growing up that one brush with the law could have seen them deported.
Just as she did not have a childhood free of deportation fears, neither has her son.
Nathan, now 13, is hardly the only youth pondering the possibility of a relative’s departure, according to Lisette Sanchez, a psychologist in Long Beach, California. She said children are leaving school with “Know Your Rights” cards advising them of their civil liberties during ICE encounters, but they may not understand the information.
“They’re just feeling fear,” she said. “They’re being told something’s gonna happen. So mental health wise, you’re looking at chronic anxiety. You’re looking at hypervigilance.”
Angélica Reyes and her son Nathan Reyes in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, California, on February 9, 2025. (Zaydee Sanchez/The 19th)
To gain some sense of control, they may overconsume social media, leading to racing thoughts, rapid heart rate and sleeping difficulties.
“It’s this chronic nonstop anxiety because the state of uncertainty feels never-ending, and in many ways, it is not ending, right?” Sanchez said. “There’s different news every day.”
By speaking openly with children, parents can help them better manage stress, she said. Teachers, if they’re permitted, can broach the topic of immigration. Nathan appreciated how his Spanish teacher led a class discussion after the election.
“Sharing your feelings and emotions and finding that a lot of other people are feeling very similar can bring comfort to you,” he said.
Reyes gave birth to her son while she was in college and briefly wed to his father. She applied for legal status as an immediate family member of a U.S. citizen, her spouse. But years passed before the federal government responded to her request, she said. By then, her marriage had ended.
“I don’t think people understand how long the path to citizenship can be, what it looks like, how costly and time-intensive it is,” Sanchez said.
Reyes, who has not remarried, said being undocumented seeps into every aspect of her life, including romantic relationships. She feels obligated to tell prospective partners about her status.
“I remember to always be upfront, like, ‘Hey, I’m undocumented. I don’t want you to think I’m going to use you for papers,’” she said.
Reyes lives in one of the country’s 4.7 million mixed-status households, which include undocumented individuals and people with legal status or U.S. citizenship. If she gets deported, she has arranged for others to care for her son.
Her sister, two years younger, is a U.S. citizen. Asked if she resents that twist of fate, Reyes said, “I’m happy that she gets to be safe. I think that there’s a lot of pain and guilt for her.”
Her sister realizes, Reyes said, that her entire family could be taken away.
Reyes and her son Nathan doing a science experiment when he was little. (Angelica Reyes)
Should she be forced out of the only country she considers home, Reyes wants her son to know this: “I would never willingly leave you. I am dedicated to you. I love you, and I will always be working as hard as possible to get back to you.”
For Nathan, it is mind-boggling that anyone would want his mother out. He doesn’t understand why politicians demonize immigrants. Trump launched his first presidential campaign calling them criminals and continues to malign them.
“My mom has done a lot of good for her community,” Nathan said. “She has organized a finders keepers closet where people who don’t have some resources they need, like canned food or clothes, can take what they need.”
Just as Nathan defends her honor, Reyes vouches for her parents. Her mother is now a nail technician and her father is a food vendor. Growing up, she said, she watched them visit the sick, volunteer at churches and fundraise for the poor.
“Whenever they saw a need, they stepped up, and they didn’t wait for someone else to help,” she said.
She’s hurt when people sympathize with Dreamers while disparaging their parents, that the immigration system paints family members as saints or sinners. The DACA recipients she’s researched feel similarly, Nájera said.
“Many of the students that I interviewed were always talking about their parents,” Nájera said. “They did not want their stories to be divorced from their parents and their family stories. These families, they’re units.”
But the Dream Act caused a migrant generational divide, insinuating that those who arrived in this country as children deserve citizenship, while their parents and others who arrived as adults do not, Nájera said.
Angélica Reyes helped paint the red and yellow skulls on the mural across the street from Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, where she graduated. (Zaydee Sanchez/The 19th)
Migration often occurs out of necessity. For example, after NAFTA took effect in 1994, U.S. agricultural exports flooded Mexico, displacing workers, according to Edward Alden, a distinguished visiting professor in the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University. Four years earlier, over 4 million Mexican migrants were in the United States, a figure that ballooned to nearly 13 million — around 9 percent of Mexico’s population — by 2008.
Reyes said NAFTA crushed the bakery business her father’s side of the family owned because it could not compete with the U.S. companies that swooped in. Her parents migrated north to earn higher wages.
Today, economic instability is but one of the reasons that motivate migrants.
“A lot of the Venezuelans are leaving Venezuela because it’s a violent, dangerous place, and the government has destroyed the economy in different ways,” Alden said. “Same thing out of Central America. These are people who aren’t necessarily leaving for economic reasons. They’re doing it for personal safety reasons.”
Reyes said she has Central American students who fled horrors. She wants them to feel safe in the United States, and the fact Los Angeles Unified has pledged not to cooperate with immigration officials voluntarily provides some comfort. Run by a formerly undocumented superintendent, the sanctuary districtblocked Homeland Security agents from entering two schools in April.
The fear of raids on campuses has traumatized her students, Reyes said. “It’s so difficult to convince my students that they are worthy of love and that they’re worthy of respect and that they deserve civil rights.”
It is equally difficult to keep advocating for herself, she said. But as the threat of deportation looms, she has no choice but to keep fighting.
“It’s hard to know that I can’t earn citizenship and that I can’t give my kid stability or safety,” she said. “I feel like if I could earn it, I would have three citizenships. I would have put in the work.”
Immigrant rights advocates are urging state and higher ed leaders not to make any hasty changes to their in-state tuition policies after President Trump issued an executive order on Monday threatening to crack down on sanctuary cities and localities with laws that benefit undocumented immigrants.
The blow to undocumented students, who in nearly half the country pay in-state tuition, is tucked into an executive order focused mostly on pressuring state and local officials to abandon their cities’ sanctuary status and cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The order demands federal officials make lists of “sanctuary jurisdictions” and the federal funds that could be suspended or cut if they don’t change course. The order also commands them to take “appropriate action” to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and practices “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” including in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students “but not to out-of-state Americans.”
The move has the potential to affect 24 states and Washington, D.C., which allow in-state tuition for local students with or without citizenship. (Florida previously allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates but ended its decade-old, historically bipartisan policy in February.) Undocumented students and supporters have long touted these policies as a way to make college more affordable for those who can’t access federal financial aid but who grew up in the states and plan to work in their local communities after they graduate.
“What immigrant, international and refugee students bring is needed talent, skills and contributions,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “In-state tuition increases the number of a state’s residents who are college educated, who are able to contribute far more to the state’s economy and to their communities than if they did not have a college education.”
Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, said many of these students come from low-income backgrounds and couldn’t afford college otherwise.
Her organization is currently scrambling to help undocumented students in Florida pay for the remainder of their credits and graduate before they have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition rates. In some cases, that means helping them transfer to more affordable institutions.
For many, “it’s just impossible for them to be able to come up with that money,” she said.
She’s encouraging state and institutional leaders to avoid “panicking” or “making abrupt policy changes” in response to the executive order.
Other executive orders have “created so much panic and unnecessary movement from colleges, universities, states, that it was more hurtful than anything,” she said. The administration is putting forward a “belief” that charging undocumented students in-state tuition rates is unlawful, but “that belief is legally dubious.”
Deciphering the Executive Order
Immigrants’ advocates and legal scholars say the meaning of the executive order is somewhat hazy. For example, it’s unclear what it means for federal officials to “take appropriate action” to prevent in-state tuition policies from being enforced.
The order also doesn’t directly say states or institutions with such laws will lose any federal funding, noted Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice at the UCLA School of Law and co-director of the law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy.
Still, the order’s threatening tone toward sanctuary cities’ federal funds could be “a window into where this fight could go if the federal government wants to expend significant political capital on this issue,” Arulanantham said. Congress, for example, could decide to pass a law to cut federal funds from universities that offer undocumented students in-state tuition—a proposal outlined in Project 2025. But the executive order itself doesn’t explicitly take away federal dollars from anyone or have the power to do so, he said.
“If I were a local government or state government official, I probably wouldn’t sue tomorrow over this,” Arulanantham said. “I would wait to see if this is actually going to have any teeth, or if it’s just like a press release.”
Pacheco similarly described the order as “warning” states of the administration’s posture toward these policies. At the same time, she believes it’s important to plan ahead in case Trump takes the issue further.
“They’re trying to tell states, ‘We believe that you providing certain benefits for undocumented students is against the law,’” she said. “We’ve known this forever—these states are not violating the law.”
The order suggests that in-state tuition for undocumented students “may violate” a federal statutory provision that says undocumented people can’t receive higher ed benefits unless citizens are also eligible. But in-state tuition policies are designed to serve citizens living in these states, as well. For example, under California’s Assembly Bill 540, any nonresident who spent three years in California high schools is eligible for in-state tuition. That policy also benefits citizens who grew up in the state who may have left for any reason and returned.
These types of in-state tuition policies, including California’s, have faced legal challenges in the past, “but all the challenges have failed, said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law. He described the executive order as “vaguely worded,” while the state laws, by contrast, are “very clear.”
The legal argument is that undocumented students are “just being treated equally as all other residents of the state,” he said. “The idea is that they’re residents, which means they’re taxpayers—maybe it’s sales tax, maybe state income tax, federal income tax—whatever it is, they should be treated like other residents and not discriminated against because of their immigration status.”
What Happens Next
Arulanantham worries that despite their strong legal foundation, states and higher ed institutions may rush to end in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students out of fear.
“That’s actually almost certainly the primary purpose of this order”: to spur “pre-emptive discrimination because [institutions] think they have to or they think it’s safer to,” he said.
Feldblum noted that, prior to the executive order, some state lawmakers were already starting to shift on the issue, perhaps “to align themselves with the federal government.”
While some states have recently doubled down on such policies, proposing new legislation to expand in-state tuition eligibility, others have also moved to curtail them. Following in Florida’s footsteps, lawmakers in other states, including Kansas, Kentucky and Texas, are considering legislation to prohibit in-state tuition for undocumented students. Texas was the first to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates in 2001, joined by California that same year.
“This is not coming in a vacuum … We have to take this seriously and substantively, consider the kinds of actions we need to take to defend in-state tuition—including, if needed, legal action,” Feldblum said. “And then also make sure we’re placing equal emphasis on supporting and communicating with potentially impacted students so that they know their education is important and that they’re important.”
Students began asking questions soon after President Donald Trump took office.
“How old do I have to be to adopt my siblings?” an area student asked a teacher, worried that their parents could be deported.
“Can I attend school virtually?” asked another student, reasoning that they would be safer from being targeted by immigration agents if they studied online at home.
A straight-A student from a South American country stunned and saddened her teacher by saying, “So when are they going to send me back?”
“Can I borrow a laminator?” asked another, who wanted to make a stack of “Know Your Rights” flyers sturdier. High schoolers have been passing the guides out, informing people what to do if stopped and questioned about immigration status.
What that might mean for the children of targeted immigrants, or whether they would be rounded up, has been the subject of speculation, rumor and fear.
In early March, the Trump administration began detaining families at a Texas center, with the intention of deporting the children and adults together.
Kansas City area school districts are responding, training teachers and staff on protocols in case immigration agents try to enter a school and sending notices to parents.
“Not every school district, not every charter school, not every private school, has addressed the issue,” said Christy J. Moreno with Revolución Educativa, a Kansas City nonprofit advocating for Latinos’ educational success.
Parents in some local schools have had their fears calmed through district communication.
“There have been some districts that have been a little bit more public about their stance on this, but in general terms, they’re not being very public,” said Moreno, an advocacy and impact officer. “It’s because of all the executive orders and the fear that federal funding will be taken away.”
Indeed, when asked to comment, most area districts declined or pointed to district policy posted online.
Immigrant children’s right to attend public school, K-12, is constitutionally protected.
A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, guarantees it regardless of immigration status.
The Plyler ruling also ensures that schools do not ask the immigration status of children as they enroll, something that area districts have emphasized in communication to parents.
The Shawnee Mission School District relies on policies that are the responsibility of building administrators if any external agency, such as law enforcement, requests access to or information about a student.
“We strongly believe that every child deserves free and unfettered access to a quality public education, regardless of immigration status,” said David A. Smith, chief communications officer, in a statement. “While we cannot control the actions of others, we can control how we respond.”
Schools were once understood to be off limits for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Schools were considered to be “sensitive places,” along with hospitals and places of worship.
Trump rescinded that nearly 14-year-old policy by executive order immediately upon taking office in January.
In February, the Denver Public Schools sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, arguing that the schools’ duty to educate students was hindered by the change.
Students were missing school out of fear, the Colorado educators said. And administrators and teachers were forced to redirect resources to train staff on how to react in case immigration agents entered school grounds.
On March 7, a federal judge sided with Homeland Security in denying the injunction.
The ruling gleaned some clarity for schools, with the government noting that the current policy requires “some level of approval on when to conduct an action” in a school.
But that guardrail doesn’t negate anxieties, the judge acknowledged.
In the Kansas City area, one mother, with two children in public school, indicated that her district’s support was too hesitant.
“I know that the districts at this time have not come out in support of immigrant families in these difficult times,” she said. “They are just being very diplomatic, saying that education comes first.”
Plyler v. Doe: Constitutionally protected, but still threatened
Plyler v. Doe isn’t as universally understood as Brown v. Board of Education.
The U.S. Supreme Court case guaranteeing immigrant children’s right to a public K-12 education is a landmark decision, said Rebeca Shackleford, director of federal government relations for All4Ed, a national nonprofit advocating for educational equity.
“Kids are losing out already, even though they still have their right to this education,” Shackleford said. “There are kids who are not in school today because their parents are holding them back.”
The class-action case originated in Texas.
In 1975, the state legislature said school districts could deny enrollment to children who weren’t “legally admitted” into the U.S., withholding state funds for those children’s education.
Two years later, the Tyler district decided to charge $1,000 tuition to Mexican students who couldn’t meet the legally admitted requirement. James Plyler was the superintendent of the Tyler Independent School District.
Lower courts ruled for the children and their parents, noting that the societal costs of not educating the children outweighed the state’s harm. The lower courts also ruled the state could not preempt federal immigration law.
Eventually the case was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1982 upheld the rights of the students to receive a K-12 education, 5-4, citing the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause.
“By denying these children a basic education,” the court said, “we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”
The court also said that holding children accountable for their parents’ actions “does not comport with fundamental conceptions of justice.”
In 2011, Alabama saw a dramatic drop in Latino student attendance, even among U.S.-born children, when the state ordered districts to determine the immigration status of students as they enrolled.
The law was later permanently blocked by a federal court.
The proposed law would allow districts to charge undocumented students tuition, and would require districts to check the legal status of students as they enrolled.
The bill recently passed out of an education committee.
The chilling effect of such proposals, like current calls for mass deportations, can be widespread for children, advocates said.
“How can you learn if you’re worried about whether or not your parents are going to be home when you get home from school?” Shackleford said.
Teachers nationwide are seeing the impact as students worry for themselves, their parents and friends.
“I think sometimes we forget that the words that we use as adults and the messages that we send are affecting our kids,” Shackleford, a former teacher, said. “And no one feels that more than teachers and classroom educators, because they’re right there in the rooms and hearing this and seeing the pain of their students.”
Information vacuums contribute to rumors
Voids in information leave room for misinformation, which is quickly spread by social media.
Local advocates for immigrant rights have been tamping down rumors about raids, especially in regard to schools.
There have not been any reported incidents involving ICE agents inside or on local K-12 school grounds.
But in February, a man was detained near a Kansas City school, presumably as he was getting ready to drop a child off for the day’s lessons.
Homeland Security officials arrested a man they said had previously been deported. Staff of the Guadalupe Centers Elementary & Pre-K School acted quickly, escorting the child into the building.
For districts, managing communications can be a balance.
North Kansas City Schools began getting questions from parents about ICE and Customs and Border Protection early this year.
On Jan. 24, the district sent a notice to parents emphasizing policies that had been in place for several years.
“In general, law enforcement has the same limited level of access to student records as members of the public with no special permissions,” according to the notice. “Law enforcement agents are not permitted to speak with nor interact with students without a valid subpoena, court order or explicit parent permission unless it’s an emergency situation.”
Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Collier addressed immigration in a late January board meeting.
Collier said that work had begun “behind the scenes” after Trump rescinded the sensitive-places policy.
“What we didn’t want to do was to get out front and begin to alarm everybody, to create anxiety,” Collier said, noting the “feelings of heaviness and in some cases feelings of hopelessness.”
All staff would be trained, including legal and security teams, in identifying valid court orders or warrants.
She emphasized the emotional well-being of students. And the district has posted guidance online.
“We’re going to make it to the other side of this,” Collier told her board. “So hold on. Don’t lose hope.”
Florida state lawmakers have eliminated in-state tuition for undocumented students, reversing a decade-old law that once enjoyed bipartisan support.
Previously, undocumented students in Florida could apply for waivers to pay in-state tuition rates, if they went to high school in the state for at least three consecutive years and enrolled in college within two years of graduating.
Under the new policy, included in a sweeping immigration bill signed by Governor Ron DeSantis last week, only “citizens of the United States” or those “lawfully present in the United States” qualify. Students receiving the waivers need to be “reevaluated for eligibility” by July 1.
“I don’t think you should be admitted to college in Florida if you’re here illegally,” DeSantis said in a press conference Friday, “but to give in-state tuition was just a slap in the face to taxpayers.”
Florida was one of 25 states that offered in-state tuition to undocumented students at public colleges and universities, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, a data hub run by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. These reduced tuition prices came as a relief to undocumented students, who can’t access federal financial aid like their peers and often lack work authorization unless they’re part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. (Of the approximately 400,000 undocumented students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, most don’t hold DACA status.)
Policymakers in other states are considering taking similar steps to curb in-state tuition for these students as they embrace President Donald Trump’s national push against undocumented immigration. Since the presidential election in November, state lawmakers in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas have introduced legislation to remove in-state tuition for undocumented students. As the issue becomes a political lightning rod, politicians in other states are doubling down on financial supports for these students, introducing bills that would expand in-state tuition eligibility, including in Indiana, New Mexico, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance, said advocates “should be prepared and ready” to come out against similar legislation elsewhere in the country.
A Game of ‘Political Football’
In-state tuition for undocumented students has become a “political football” in Florida, said Jared Nordlund, Florida state director at UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organization. But that wasn’t always the case.
Republican lieutenant governor Jeanette Nuñez—who resigned last week to become interim president of Florida International University—originally advocated for extending in-state tuition to undocumented students, and former Republican governor Rick Scott, now Florida’s senior U.S. senator, signed the bill into law. Nuñez has since pulled back her support for the policy, posting on X in January that the law had “run its course” and needed to be repealed.
The political winds have shifted on what was once a fairly bipartisan issue, Nordlund said. “Ten years ago, the Republican Party wasn’t the party of Trump.”
Ira Mehlman, media director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization that promotes more restrictive immigration policies, applauded Republican state lawmakers for “not rewarding people who are in the country illegally.”
“The more you reward people for breaking the laws, even if it’s through their kids, the more likely people are to disobey the laws,” Mehlman said. And “you are filling seats that might otherwise have gone to kids who are equally deserving and whose parents have not violated any laws.”
Now undocumented students are left to pay out-of-state tuition prices, a significant cost difference. During the 2023–24 academic year, average tuition and fees at Florida colleges and universities for out-of-state students was more than triple the cost state residents paid, according to the Florida Policy Institute, an organization that promotes economic mobility in Florida. The state’s in-state tuition waivers benefited an estimated 6,500 undocumented students that year.
The Ripple Effects
An undocumented student at University of Central Florida, who requested anonymity, told Inside Higher Ed that she couldn’t have pursued a bachelor’s degree as a full-time student without in-state tuition. She would’ve gone for an associate degree instead, taking one or two classes at a time, to keep costs down.
Without in-state tuition, “who knows if I’d be graduating right now,” she said.
The student, who was brought to Florida from Mexico at age 4, is graduating this spring, before the policy change takes effect. But she worries about her peers who won’t have the same resources she did. She previously helped and encouraged other undocumented students to apply for the in-state tuition waiver because of how much it helped her.
“I gave them that hope,” she said, “and now it’s being snatched away from them.”
The student argued she and other undocumented students would use their degrees to contribute to the local labor market, a point they’ve made to state lawmakers in the past; her long-term goal is to open a marketing agency and work with small business owners in the state.
“We studied here our whole life, and our goal is to get our degree and be able to contribute to the economy,” she said.
Diego Sánchez, director of policy and strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance, said he scrambled to pay for college in Florida before in-state tuition became available to undocumented students like him.
In 2008, he enrolled at St. Thomas University, a private institution, and joined as many activities as he could that came with university scholarships—student government, choir and cross country, even though he wasn’t a singer or a runner. He couldn’t have afforded college otherwise, which is why he and other activists advocated for in-state tuition for Florida’s undocumented population. He’s “very disappointed” to see that win reversed.
“It’s about scoring political points,” Sánchez said. “And unfortunately, these students who grew up in Florida, went to our public schools, are going to suffer the consequences … The state has already invested in them, and they’re working their way up to contribute to the community, [to] pay taxes.”
Undocumented students and their supporters argue Florida is going to lose out on these students as future skilled workers at a time when the state is challenged by workforce shortages and an aging population.
Feldblum said these students tend to be “tremendously determined” and will likely attend college in other states, taking their talents with them. She also expects some will stop out of higher ed altogether because they can’t afford it or because they don’t know about other resources available to them, like privately funded scholarships.
“When there are obstacles put in front of students, when students are told, ‘You’re not welcome here’ in different ways, that’s really discouraging,” she said. “That’s disincentivizing,” when Florida has a “need for talent, the need for workforce development.”
What’s Next
The fight for in-state tuition in Florida isn’t over, some advocates say.
“Hopefully we can eventually undo the repeal [of in-state tuition] when the time is right,” Nordlund said. For now, he’s focused on educating state lawmakers and the public about the economic benefits of the repealed policy.
Sánchez plans to lobby state lawmakers to at least let undocumented students already in college finish their degrees at in-state tuition prices, a proposed amendment to the law that previously failed. He hopes colleges and universities push state lawmakers on the issue as well.
He continues to worry, however, that these kinds of attacks on students’ in-state tuition “could spread to other parts of the country.”
Mehlman would like to see other states, and even Congress, look to Florida’s example and work to end in-state tuition for noncitizens nationwide.
“Florida and Texas have sort of been leaders in this area,” he said, “and they certainly can show the way for other states that might be considering this as well.”
Florida state lawmakers voted on Thursday to get rid of in-state tuition for undocumented students as part of a sweeping immigration bill, The Miami Heraldreported.
Previously, undocumented students who attended high school in the state for at least three consecutive years and enrolled in college within two years of graduating could receive a waiver to pay in-state tuition rates. Now their tuition costs will go up significantly, a particular challenge given that these students can’t receive federal student aid.
Democratic lawmakers attempted to amend the bill so that undocumented students currently enrolled at public universities could pay in-state rates for the next four years, but the amendment failed in the state Senate.
“We wanted to repeal in-state tuition and focus on Floridians,” Governor Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Thursday.
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Dive Brief:
Florida lawmakers passed an expansive immigration package this week that would remove undocumented students’ eligibility for in-state tuition rates at public colleges.
If signed into law, the reversal would take effect July 1. However, the legislation has intensified a growing rift between the state’s Republican lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis as they compete to show their loyalty to President Donald Trump and his goal of cracking down on immigration.
DeSantis heavily criticized the package, saying Wednesday that it “fails to honor our promises to voters, fails to meet the moment, and would actually weaken state immigration enforcement.”The governor said he would veto it unless legislators approved more restrictive immigration measures.
Dive Insight:
For a decade, Florida has permitted undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges if they attended their last three years of high school in the state and enrolled in higher education within two years of graduation.
Republican State Sen. Randy Finefirst proposed rolling back the allowance in December as a standalone bill. In January, DeSantis cited the bill as a priority when he abruptly called a special legislative session aimed at helping Trump implement tougher immigration policies.
Florida has two public higher education systems — the Florida College System and the State University System of Florida, which oversee 28 colleges and a dozen universities, respectively.
In the 2023-24 fiscal year, just over 2,000 nonresident students attending one of the university system’s institutions received a waiver to pay in-state tuition, according to an analysis of the bill prepared by the Senate appropriations committee’s staff. In the Florida College System, the number was almost 4,600 that year.The combined discounts were valued at almost $40.7 million, it said.
The analysis did not disaggregate the student data by immigration status, and it’s unclear how many undocumented students would be affected by the revocation of the tuition waiver. One report from 2023 estimated about 40,000 undocumented students attended Florida colleges in 2021.
It’s also unclear if colleges would benefit financially from the end of the waiver, the analysis said.
“Some students who are undocumented for federal immigration purposes may choose to pay the out-of-state fee while others may choose to withdraw from school,” it said. “Institutions may experience an increase in fee revenue as students pay the out-of-state fees, or experience declines in fee revenue as those students decide to withdraw from school and are not replaced by other students.”
Republican lawmakers praised the final legislative package — given the backronym title Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy, or TRUMP, Act — and said it would help the state act in partnership with the federal government.
The bill’s sponsors in the Florida House and Senate, as well as the top Republicans in both chambers, also repeatedly invoked Trump’s name in prepared statements.
“Supporting President Trump’s mission to secure our borders, Florida stands ready to act with the most aggressive immigration policy ever introduced,” said House Speaker Daniel Perez.
Senate President Ben Albritton touted the state’s previous work on immigration.
“When it comes to cracking down on illegal immigration, Florida is already so far ahead of most states,” he said.
But in a press release two days later, DeSantis’ office dismissed the legislators’ work as a half-measure.
Republicans hold a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature. Typically, this supercharged influence would be unlikely to matter, as the governor’s mansion is also held by a Republican.
But DeSantis’ lack of approval adds uncertainty and diminishes the odds of the package becoming law. Without his approval, it is unclear if legislators would return to the drawing board or if enough Republicans would band together to overrule his veto.
DeSantis’ popularity within his own state party has weakened recently.
Shortly after the session began, Florida lawmakers ended it and called their own as a means of prioritizing their goals over DeSantis’. And both Reps. Perez and Fine have publicly criticized DeSantis.
Perez suggested to the Tampa Bay Times on Thursday that DeSantis hadn’t sufficiently communicated with legislators ahead of the session. He added that “all options are on the table” to get anti-immigration legislation passed — including overriding a DeSantis veto.
The $500 million package seeks to enact measures outside of the higher education sector. It would create the position of chief immigration officer to coordinate enforcement actions with the federal government. It would also mandate the death penalty for undocumented immigrants found guilty of capital crimes — a rule that would run contrary to longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent and could spur legal challenges.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, did not mince words in response to the bill’s passage Tuesday.
“Florida Republicans have lost their damn minds this week,” Fried said in a statement. “Despite attempts from Democrats to protect students, this legislation promises to kick Dreamers out of college before they can finish their degree and gives huge bonuses to local law enforcement for working with ICE to ramp up deportations. It’s an unconscionable abuse of power for a state legislature.”
Advocates for undocumented students have their hands full as they prepare for President-elect Donald Trump to take office later this month.
They’re fielding questions from nervous students fearful of Trump’s promises of mass deportations and advising college staff members seeking to support these students within legal bounds. But then, the Biden administration dropped a fresh disappointment on top of their heaping pile of concerns when it pulled back on a proposal to make undocumented students eligible for some TRIO programs.
The decision—tucked into a set of finalized rules released at the end of the year—was met with mixed emotions from advocates who have long pushed to give undocumented students access to the federal college prep programs designed to help disadvantaged students enroll and persist in college. Some mourned the chance to secure a win for undocumented students before Trump took office. Others saw the decision as a painful but pragmatic response to the incoming administration, which may have barred undocumented students from these programs anyway or penalized TRIO programs for serving them. Proponents of the dead proposal expect it’ll be years before the opportunity to open up these programs presents itself again.
Magin Sanchez, higher education policy analyst at UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organization, said undocumented students would have a lot to gain from TRIO programs, given that they already face major hurdles to enrolling in college, like a lack of access to federal financial aid. He believes the extra academic support and college counseling these programs offer could put these students on a more level playing field with their peers.
“Higher education is one of the surest pathways to economic mobility and prosperity,” Sanchez said. “There are significant barriers for this population, students that just want to have access to a better life, like any college student.”
A former board member at the Council for Opportunity in Education told Inside Higher Ed that they didn’t know how to feel about the Biden administration’s decision. The organization, which supports low-income and first-generation students and students with disabilities, was among those that pushed for the change.
“With the new administration coming in, we want to do everything to protect our students, so in that sense, I kind of understood why,” said the former board member, who asked to remain anonymous in order to avoid speaking for their current employer. “My other reaction was, man, we’re doing this again? We’re bringing up students’ hopes again? We bring up their hopes only to shoot them down again and again.”
What Happened
The Education Department initially proposed that noncitizen students be eligible for three TRIO programs—Upward Bound, Talent Search and Educational Opportunity Centers—if students enrolled in or planned to enroll in high schools in the United States, its territories or Freely Associated States and met other eligibility criteria. Those programs were selected because they serve students in public K-12 schools, which are open to all students, regardless of immigration status.
But in finalized rules released Dec. 30, the department decided against it.
Department officials wrote that, after reviewing public comment, they believed the proposal was “too narrow,” because it didn’t include the Student Support Services program, which offers academic support to college students, or the McNair Scholars program, which prepares students for graduate education. Officials also concluded that opening only some programs to undocumented students would “cause confusion” and “increase administrative burden.”
Department officials also argued that the Higher Education Act, the federal law that governs how federal higher ed programs are administered, doesn’t explicitly bar noncitizens from participating in TRIO programs.
So, the department scrapped the proposal altogether “to reconsider how best to ensure that the TRIO programs are able to reach all populations of disadvantaged students, irrespective of immigration status,” officials wrote.
Pushback, Parsing and Planning
Some advocates don’t buy the department’s explanations.
The former COE board member said TRIO directors already have to parse regulatory differences between different programs, so the idea that opening up only some programs to undocumented students would prove too confusing “didn’t fly too well with me.”
“I get it, it’s a political explanation, but at the same time, it doesn’t help the community with that messaging,” they said.
Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said as far as he’s concerned, “This really seems like a classic case of elections have consequences. Had we been talking about an incoming Harris administration, I don’t know that the department would have pulled back the regulation.”
At the same time, the Biden administration seems to have left the door open a crack. The language of the finalized rules implies TRIO directors could interpret the Higher Education Act as not explicitly forbidding undocumented students from participating in TRIO programs.
“I think you can certainly read that as offering up an interpretation of existing statute that might provide some flexibility—certainly the idea that if it’s not delineated, that doesn’t necessarily preclude it,” Fansmith said. So, the Biden administration may be “indicating where schools could go, but frankly, stopping short of something they know would be quickly reversed by the incoming administration.” Still, that’s “certainly not as clear as formally regulating on it.”
Now in a gray area, it remains to be seen whether TRIO directors will use that latitude to serve students regardless of citizenship or if they’ll continue to bar undocumented students, given the Trump administration is unlikely to interpret the law in this way. Their choices could prove risky. A year ago, some school and college administrators were already worried that, if undocumented students were granted access to these programs, TRIO programs could face Republican backlash and funding cuts. This summer, six Republicans in Congress, including former chair of the House education committee Virginia Foxx, opposed the proposal in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Education department officials wrote in the finalized rules that the department “may reconsider TRIO student eligibility through future rulemaking efforts.” But the proposal’s proponents believe there’s a slim to none chance of that during Trump’s term, given his rhetoric against undocumented immigrants.
“We’re going to have to wait at least four years again,” Fansmith said.
Nonetheless, some remain hopeful that undocumented students will benefit from TRIO programs in the future. Sanchez said he still thinks it’s going to happen, even if this “window of opportunity” has passed.
“We’ll keep fighting,” Sanchez said. “We’ll keep advocating, because we may not have gotten it right now, but we’ll get it eventually.”
