Trump administration sues UD over undocumented student tuition policy

Why Should Delaware Care?
As part of a nationwide legal effort, the Trump administration is suing the University of Delaware to end a long-standing policy that allows undocumented students who meet the school’s residency requirements to pay in-state tuition rates to attend UD. 

The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against the University of Delaware over the school’s policy that allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates. 

The lawsuit, one of dozens of similar suits the federal government has filed against universities throughout the country, seeks to prevent the university from offering its lower, in-state tuition rates to undocumented students. 

The federal Department of Justice has successfully sued to stop the practice in six states – including Republican-led states like Texas and Oklahoma and Democrat-led ones like Illinois –  and has filed pending lawsuits on the matter in an additional 19 states. 

The federal government’s case appears to rest on the fact that in-state tuition is only available to Delaware residents, meaning not all Americans have access to the benefit. 

Since the benefit is not universally accessible to all American students, it should not be available for undocumented students, regardless of where they reside, because it is discriminatory against students in other states, the U.S. Department of Justice argues.

“The University of Delaware maintains a policy […] that makes resident illegal aliens eligible for in-state tuition while denying that same benefit to U.S. citizens from other states,” the suit states. “That constitutes blatant unequal treatment favoring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens.” 

The policy, the government argues, violates a 1996 federal law that forbids undocumented or illegal immigrants from receiving “any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit […] without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident” of a certain state. President Donald Trump has also issued a series of related executive orders regarding undocumented students during his second term in office. 

The school currently allows undocumented students to access in-state tuition if they meet the requirements of the school’s Student Residency Classification policy. The policy already excludes “alien[s] in this country on a student or other temporary visa” and those with “the intention or legal requirement to return to the country of former residence.” This, though, does not technically exclude people without official citizenship documentation. 

For a full-time student, the university lists its in-state tuition as $15,740 for the 2026-2027 academic year. Out-of-state students attending the university full-time will pay $42,470 in tuition this year. 

According to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, there are 6,651 first-generation immigrant students enrolled in higher education throughout Delaware, a figure that includes undocumented students. The organization does not have definitive statistics about the University of Delaware specifically, and the school does not disclose citizenship status of its students per privacy laws. 

The state legislature passed a law in 2012 that allowed Delaware’s public higher education institutions to charge undocumented students in-state tuition. The bill states that at the time, there were just 11 undocumented students who would qualify for in-state tuition under the new law between UD and Delaware State University. 

In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, a university spokesperson said the institution was “reviewing [the lawsuit] carefully.” He declined further comment because it is a pending legal matter.

In a press release announcing the lawsuit, U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said that the federal government is seeking to enforce federal law because Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings is not. 

“This Department of Justice’s efforts will not cease until we have challenged every state law or university policy that gives preferential treatment to illegal aliens over our nation’s own citizens,” he said. “Congress long ago made clear that states cannot give reduced tuition to illegal aliens not available to all Americans.”

The University of Delaware was previously impacted by Trump administration cuts to the National Institutes of Health grant programs by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), losing millions in research funding.