What to know as Trump’s immigration crackdown strips tuition breaks from thousands of students

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Tens of thousands of U.S. college students without legal resident status are losing access to in-state tuition prices as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.

The Justice Department has been suing states to end tuition breaks for students without legal residency, starting with Texas in June. It has also filed lawsuits in Kentucky, Minnesota and, most recently, Oklahoma. Last year, Florida ended its tuition break for students living there illegally,

“Federal law prohibits aliens not lawfully present in the United States from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens,” the Justice Department argued in a lawsuit this month in Oklahoma. “There are no exceptions.”

The tuition breaks once enjoyed wide bipartisan support but have increasingly come under criticism from Republicans in recent years.

Here’s what to know about the tuition breaks:

Texas’ program was blocked first

Texas’ tuition policy was initially passed with sweeping bipartisan majorities in the Legislature and signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, as a way to open access to higher education for students without legal residency already living in the state. Supporters then and now say it boosted the state’s economy by creating a better-educated and better-prepared workforce.

The law allowed students without legal resident status to qualify for in-state tuition if they had lived in Texas for three years before graduating from high school and for a year before enrolling in college. They also had to sign an affidavit promising to apply for legal resident status as soon as possible.

Texas now has about 73,000 qualifying students enrolled in its public universities and colleges, according to the most recent estimate from the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonpartisan nonprofit group of university leaders focused on immigration policy. The latest estimate is an increase over earlier projections because of a change in its methodology for identifying qualifying students.

Texas has about 690,000 students overall at its public universities.

The difference in tuition rates is substantial.

For example, at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, a 34,000-student campus along the border with Mexico, a state resident will pay about $10,000 in basic tuition for a minimum full-time class schedule in the upcoming school year. A nonresident student will pay $19,000.

Political pushback and a swift end

Texas’ law stood mostly unchallenged for years, but it came under fire as debates over illegal immigration intensified. In the 2012 Republican presidential primary, Perry apologized after saying critics of the law “did not have a heart.”

The law withstood several repeal efforts in the Republican-dominated Legislature. During the legislative session that ended June 2, a repeal bill did not even get a vote.

But the ax fell quickly. After the Trump administration filed a lawsuit calling the law unconstitutional, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a key Trump ally, chose not to defend the law in court and instead filed a motion agreeing that it should not be enforced.

In Oklahoma, which the Presidents’ Alliance estimates will have about 2,700 students affected, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, also a Republican, filed a similar motion.

“Rewarding foreign nationals who are in our country illegally with lower tuition costs that are not made available to out-of-state American citizens is not only wrong — it is discriminatory and unlawful,” Drummond said in a statement.

Campuses nationwide feel the impact

At least 21 states and the University of Michigan system have laws or policies allowing tuition breaks for the immigrant students, according to the National Immigration Law Center, which favors them. Those states include Democratic-leaning ones such as California and New York, but also GOP-leaning ones such as Kansas and Nebraska.

According to the center, at least 16 states allow the immigrant students to receive scholarships or other aid to go to college.

Nationwide, the Presidents’ Alliance estimates more than 510,000 students without legal resident status are enrolled in colleges and universities, about 85% of them in undergraduate programs.

Immigration lawyers and education advocates said they are assessing whether there are legal avenues to challenge the rulings.