A “coordinated assault” on in-state tuition for undocumented students is threatening to undermine the nation’s workforce needs and derail the dreams of thousands of students who grew up in the U.S., advocates charged in a new report released Wednesday. 
With the Trump Department of Justice seeking to cancel state laws that allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates, the students are being asked to “in the middle of their education find thousands of dollars to pay for their education,” said Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, an organization that provides scholarships to undocumented students.
“And as unfair it is for the students, it is unfair for our country,” Pacheco said. “These students are talented. They grew up here. They're part of the fabric of this nation. They went to our schools …
“And so their future is tied to the future of our communities.”
Miriam Feldblum, co-founder, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said when access to in-state tuition is taken away, many undocumented students cannot bridge the gap between in-state and out-of-state rates.
“When tuition becomes unaffordable, colleges risk losing students that they have recruited, taught, and advised, and communities lose potential graduates, prepared to meet local workforce needs,” Feldblum said.
Pacheco described the Trump administration’s attacks on “tuition equity” as “short-sighted.”
“Instead of focusing on attacking these laws … they should be working to figure out how to pass something in Congress. The federal government should be trying to figure out how to strengthen these communities,” Pacheco said. “We need some sort of Dream Act legislation, something that would allow for these young people to fully be integrated into our communities.”
Pacheco and Feldblum made her remarks during a virtual press conference Wednesday for the release of a new report from TheDream.Us, MALDEF, and the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration titled, “The Coordinated Assault Against Dreamers’ Access to Tuition Equity.”
The report serves as an overview of legal challenges that the Trump administration has levied against states that provide in-state tuition for undocumented students.
They were joined by Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense And Educational Fund, or MALDEF, who says the administration has filed 26 lawsuits against tuition equity policies, including against 24 states, the District of Columbia and one university. MALDEF is fighting in court to defend tuition equity.
“The aim of all of these cases is to strike down these laws and policies providing tuition equity to undocumented, and other immigrants, and leave them with no recourse to continue or begin their higher education, because the unaffordable out-of-state tuition rates are simply too high for the students we are talking about,” Saenz said.
Saenz traced what he characterized as the Trump administration’s “campaign” to June 4, 2025, when the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit challenging the Texas Dream Act, which has allowed certain undocumented students to pay in-state tuition since 2001.
“Rather than defend the policy, the Texas Attorney General joined the DOJ in seeking to strike it down,” the American Immigration Council notes in a description that largely mirrors how Saenz described it Wednesday.
“By day’s end, Texas entered a joint motion with the DOJ, and a federal court issued a permanent injunction,” AIC states.
Saenz said the maneuver was meant to prevent motions to intervene by parties who were interested in defending the law. He lamented that the lawsuits and the Trump administration’s shrewd legal tactics aren’t generating the same media attention as the more visible, street-level enforcement actions, such as the “indiscriminate” raids and arrests that he said the administration has conducted in immigrant communities.
“This is as much a central part of the immigration policy of the Trump administration as those indiscriminate raids,” Saenz said of the 26 lawsuits seeking to cancel in-state tuition for undocumented students.
“These lawsuits are as much an attack on the rule of law as the street enforcement tactics.”
Feldblum encouraged higher education leaders to keep students and families abreast of the legal status of tuition equity policies that affect them, “because hearing about a lawsuit can just impart such anxiety, uncertainty, and disruption for students and families.”
Along those lines, her organization’s website tracks tuition equity laws and lawsuits.
She also urged higher education leaders not to participate in “preemptive compliance.”
“It's really important to know that a lawsuit itself is not changing the policy,” Feldblum said.
She also urged campuses to join each other in the fight to preserve tuition equity “because this is not an isolated attack.”
“More institutions may be targeted, but it also comes amid an environment of increased policy enforcement, other harmful policy actions. And it's important for us in higher education to connect those dots and realize all the stressors that students and others are now experiencing.”
