Aug. 8 (UPI) — The Justice Department filed a lawsuit this week challenging an Oklahoma law that provides eligible undocumented migrants with in-state tuition benefits, the latest litigation targeting migrants’ access to higher education amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Though announced Thursday, the lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.
The law, approved by the state’s legislature in 2007, offers in-state tuition at the 25 state-run colleges and universities to anyone — including undocumented migrants — who graduated from an Oklahoma high school and resided in the state with a parent or legal guardian while attending the state high school for at least two years before graduation.
The lawsuit argues the rule violates two of President Donald Trump‘s executive orders on immigration — one signed Feb. 19 directing federal departments and agencies to ensure no taxpayer-funded benefits go to “unqualified aliens,” and one April 28 ordering “appropriate” actions to end enforcement of laws and practices “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” including those in-state tuition to undocumented migrants.
The Justice Department sayd that the law favors undocumented migrants over out-of-state Americans, calling it “unequal treatment,” and argues it violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which holds federal law takes precedence precedence over state laws.
Prosecutors are asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional and issue a permanent injunction against its enforcement.
The state’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, has filed a motion in support of the Trump administration lawsuit, saying Tuesday marked “the end of a longstanding exploitation of Oklahoma taxpayers.”
“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.
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 fourth lawsuit since since June challenging state laws offering in-state tuition or tuition benefits to migrants that are unavailable to out-of-state-Americans.
In early June, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against a similar Texas law. As in Oklahoma, the Republican-led state sided with the Trump administration, and the two reached an agreement to halt its enforcement.
Similar lawsuits have also been filed in Kentucky and Minnesota.
Florida ended in-state tuition for undocumented migrants in February.
According to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, 23 states and Washington, D.C., provide in-state tuition to undocumented students. Of those, 18 and D.C. provide access to state financial aid.