by Duffy Oakley
Bowing to Trump’s pressure, Kentucky agreed to strip immigrant students of in-state tuition. Students are fighting back.
Undocumented students at all of Kentucky’s colleges and universities are at risk of losing in-state tuition rates under a federal lawsuit filed this summer by the Trump administration. The Council on Postsecondary Education, the Governor-appointed state agency which regulates tuition rates at Kentucky colleges, is the target of the lawsuit by the Department of Justice. Last month, the Council filed a motion agreeing that undocumented students who graduated from Kentucky high schools should be stripped of in-state resident status for the purpose of college tuition and scholarships such as KEES. The Higher Ed Immigration Portal estimates that about 1,000 undocumented students graduate from Kentucky high schools each year. Ending this policy, adopted as a state regulation in 2002, would force these students to pay out-of-state tuition.
The legal action against Kentucky replicates a similar legal challenge to a Texas law in June, which has since been repeated in several other states with similar policies. Like the Texas Attorney General, Kentucky officials have acquiesced to the administration’s demands, prompting a group of undocumented students called Kentucky Students for Affordable Tuition to legally intervene in the case with the backing of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Their legal motion demonstrates that being forced to pay out-of-state tuition despite being residents of Kentucky and graduates of Kentucky high schools would mean paying more than double their current rate per credit hour. As undocumented students are statistically one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the state, they argue this policy change would price many of them out of attending college at all (undocumented students are also ineligible for federal student loans and financial aid).
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky has also filed a brief in support of the undocumented students. Meanwhile, Republican state Attorney General Russell Coleman, who under Kentucky statute is responsible for defending the state’s laws, has sided with the Trump administration in arguing that the current tuition policy should be struck down. Republican state legislator T.J. Adams, who filed a bill to end the policy during this year’s legislative session, likewise applauded the DOJ’s efforts.
The attack on undocumented students’ access to affordable tuition comes in the context of the Trump administration’s increasing attacks against immigrants more generally, especially in the form of increased ICE raids, immigrant detention and deportations. Collusion with the administration by state and local officials is also not limited to this particular instance, as Louisville’s Democratic mayor made national headlines for instituting a mandatory 48-hour period before immigrants held at the city’s jail could be released, to give time for ICE to detain them. While Mayor Craig Greenberg argues this was done to avoid retaliation and the withholding of federal funds by the Trump administration (which had put Louisville on a list of ‘sanctuary cities’), community activists argue that this kind of appeasement will only further embolden Trump in his attacks on immigrants and other vulnerable populations in Kentucky and throughout the country.
While the full implications of the mayor’s strategy remain to be seen, the basic civil and human rights of migrants in the U.S. are being systematically undermined. The future of DACA, the Obama-era program that authorized unaccompanied, undocumented minors to remain in the U.S., is doubtful as it is being challenged in federal appeals court and will likely ultimately reach the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court recently allowed racial profiling in immigration raids in Los Angeles to continue while ICE appeals a lower court ruling prohibiting the practice. Meanwhile, undocumented students in Kentucky, who have yet to receive a ruling from the district court judge on whether their case will even be heard, are stuck in an anxious waiting game during these uncertain times.