PHOENIX — A former Arizona lawmaker known as the driving force behind most of the state’s toughest immigration laws is moving to challenge the university system for temporarily allowing young immigrants protected from deportation to keep paying lower-cost in-state tuition.
It comes after a court ruled that students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program must pay higher-cost out-of-state tuition. The Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees three public universities and other colleges, voted soon afterward to allow in-state costs to stand while the issue is under court review.
The court decision last month sets Arizona apart from other states that are granting in-state tuition to young immigrants in recipients of former President Barack Obama’s program. That includes Republican-dominant states such as Oklahoma, Tennessee and Nebraska.
The Trump administration has stepped up immigration enforcement and says it has not decided the program’s fate.
Russell Pearce, a former state Senate president who helped create the landmark 2010 immigration enforcement law SB1070, said Wednesday that different law prohibits benefits for anyone living here illegally.
“I come here from Idaho or Utah or Texas and you have to pay out of state tuition but I’m in the country illegally and I don’t?” Pearce said. “It’s crazy it doesn’t make sense and it’s a violation of the Constitution.”
Pearce sent a letter Tuesday to state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, giving him 60 days to sue the Board of Regents over its decision before threatening to take legal action himself.
