Sept. 3 (UPI) — The Justice Department is suing Illinois over state laws that grant in-state tuition benefits and financial assistance to migrants, accusing the Prairie State of discriminating against Americans.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, is the latest from the Trump administration targeting laws aiding migrants in receiving tuition benefits, and comes as President Donald Trump‘s feud with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker continues to deepen.
“Under federal law, schools cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
“This Department of Justice has already filed multiple lawsuits to prevent U.S. students from being treated like second-class citizens — Illinois now joins the list of states where we are relentlessly fighting to vindicate federal law.”
According to the lawsuit, Illinois laws discriminate against out-of-state Americans who are not eligible for the tuition benefits being offered to some undocumented students in the state.
The lawsuit targets two Illinois laws: the Illinois Public Act of 2003, which permits certain undocumented students with residency for purposes of receiving in-state tuition benefits; the Illinois DREAM Act of 2011, which provides scholarships, college saving plans and prepaid tuition programs to undocumented students, paid through private donations.
Federal prosecutors allege that they violate a federal law, enacted as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, that states an undocumented person in the United States “shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state … for any postsecondary education benefit” unless a U.S. citizen is also eligible for the benefit.
“This court should put an end to this discrimination against Americans that is a blatant and ongoing violation of federal law,” the prosecutors said in the lawsuit.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has led a renewed crackdown on immigration, seeking to conduct mass deportations and limiting the protections of migrants already in the country.
This is the fifth lawsuit since June challenging state laws offering in-state tuition or tuition benefits to migrants that are unavailable to out-of-state Americans.
The lawsuits follow President Donald Trump signing several immigration-related executive orders including “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens,” which directed the attorney general to identify laws “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” including “State laws that provide in-State higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-State American citizens.”
Early last month, the Justice Department sued Oklahoma for providing eligible undocumented migrants with in-state tuition benefits, with similar suits filed against Kentucky and Minnesota.
In June, prosecutors filed a suit in Texas, with the Republican-led state siding with the federal government, and the two reached an agreement to halt the Lone Star State’s law on giving undocumented migrants in-state tuition benefits.
The lawsuit was also announced on the same day that the Republican president vowed to send National Guard troops to Chicago in a crime crackdown, as he had done to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Pritzker, a Democrat and a staunch Trump critic, responded by saying there is no emergency warranting the deployment of troops in the city.
“These efforts are not about fighting crime or making communities safer,” Pritzker said in a statement.
“This is about Donald Trump testing his power and producing political drama to cover up his own corruption.”