Kansas has become the sixth state forced to stop offering in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants after the Trump administration’s Department of Justice won another round in its sweeping legal campaign against states that give tuition breaks to people in the country unlawfully while denying the same benefit to American citizens from other states.
The DOJ has now filed complaints against 21 states total, winning court decisions or settlements in six, Kansas, Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Illinois, and pressing active cases against fifteen more. The legal theory is straightforward: federal law, passed more than three decades ago, bars states from granting non-citizens state-funded benefits that are unavailable to American citizens.
That means a state university cannot charge an illegal immigrant the in-state rate while forcing a U.S. citizen from a neighboring state to pay full out-of-state tuition. For years, more than twenty states did exactly that. The DOJ is now telling them the free ride is over.
The Kansas resolution came through a proposed consent decree with the DOJ. Under the agreement, Kansas would acknowledge that its in-state tuition law for illegal immigrants is preempted by federal immigration law, the Washington Examiner reported. The deal is pending court approval.
The Illinois case was more contentious, and more revealing. U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn struck down Illinois laws granting in-state tuition, financial aid, and scholarships to illegal immigrants, ruling the state’s RISE Act and Illinois DREAM Act “unconstitutional and invalid” as applied to people without legal status. The ruling permanently blocks enforcement, though Illinois was given a 14-day window to appeal.
U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft did not hold back after the Illinois decision, as the New York Post reported:
“Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer’s dime by treating illegal aliens better than US citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law.”
That framing, taxpayers subsidizing tuition for people who broke immigration law, while lawful out-of-state residents pay more, is the core of the DOJ’s argument. And courts keep agreeing with it.
Not every state resisted the DOJ. In Texas and Oklahoma, Republican attorneys general chose not to defend their states’ tuition-break laws in court. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond both filed motions agreeing the laws should not be enforced, AP News reported.
Drummond put it bluntly:
“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.”
The DOJ itself has been equally direct. In a statement filed when it expanded the campaign to include Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, the department said: “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. There are no exceptions.”
The administration has built a steady record of legal wins across multiple fronts, from the Fifth Circuit ending Texas tuition breaks to immigration enforcement actions that have forced even reluctant courts to comply.
The numbers help explain why the DOJ has treated this as a priority. Approximately 510,000 students without legal resident status are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities nationwide, with more than 73,000 in Texas alone, AP News reported. At the University of Washington, illegal immigrants could receive a tuition discount worth $31,054 under state law, Fox News reported.
That is not a rounding error. That is a policy choice that shifts tens of millions of dollars in costs onto state taxpayers and onto American students who pay full freight because they happen to live across a state line.
Ten states still have these tuition policies on the books: Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The DOJ is suing most of them. Fifteen states face ongoing litigation: Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington.
The administration has also been active on other legal fronts, with the Ninth Circuit recently handing the DOJ an appellate win in a separate enforcement matter, part of a broader pattern of the Justice Department pressing its authority across multiple policy areas.
The DOJ’s record is not unblemished. A federal court in Minnesota ruled against the administration, though the specifics of that decision have not been publicly detailed. The DOJ has appealed the Minnesota loss to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case remains pending.
Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. made clear the administration views even one loss as temporary:
“As of today, we have now sued 21 states who we allege were thwarting Congress’s clear prohibition on placing aliens over citizens. Our efforts will not cease until President Trump’s promise is fulfilled: illegal aliens will not receive benefits denied to American citizens.”
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Division, reinforced the message:
“This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens. This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country.”
The legal foundation for the campaign rests on legislation Congress passed more than thirty years ago. The DOJ’s position is that the statute’s meaning is plain and that states have been flouting it for years, in some cases, for decades, without federal challenge. The Trump administration decided to challenge it.
With six states already forced to comply and fifteen cases still working through the courts, the legal campaign is far from finished. States like California, New York, and Massachusetts, deep-blue jurisdictions with large illegal immigrant populations and well-funded legal teams, are likely to mount the stiffest resistance.
The DOJ has also filed a new lawsuit against Colorado, expanding the front even as earlier cases reach resolution. The administration’s willingness to press the issue in hostile judicial circuits signals confidence in the underlying legal argument.
Whether every court agrees remains to be seen. But the trajectory so far has been lopsided: six wins, one loss under appeal, and fifteen cases pending. That is a record that suggests the federal statute means what it says.
This pattern of the administration using existing law to force institutional compliance has played out in other arenas as well, from court orders lifting blocks on deportation flights to drug pricing agreements that leveraged executive authority to deliver results.
For years, the political debate over in-state tuition for illegal immigrants was framed as a question of compassion versus enforcement. Supporters cast it as giving young people a chance. Critics called it a subsidy for lawbreaking.
But the DOJ’s campaign has reframed the question in terms that courts find harder to dodge: Why should someone who entered the country illegally get a better deal at a state university than an American citizen from the next state over?
No state that lost in court had a good answer. The ones still fighting have not produced one yet either.
When the law is clear and the policy is indefensible, six-and-counting is just the beginning.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.