Project 2025, the policy blueprint crafted by Donald Trump allies, calls for cutting off federal student loans at universities that provide in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants – for everyone, including U.S. citizens.) File photo by Lerman Montoya/Cronkite News)
WASHINGTON – Arizona is one of 25 states that offer in-state tuition to undocumented students.
Under a policy blueprint crafted by allies of President-elect Donald Trump, that in-state tuition policy could mean an end to federal student loans for 67,000 undergraduates just in Arizona – most of them American citizens.
The collective punishment is a pressure tactic intended to make life in the United States less comfortable for those here without permission, one of a number of policies Trump will or could pursue in his second term.
Roughly a third of students at Arizona’s three largest universities rely on federal loans – Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University.
At some smaller colleges, three quarters of students borrow through one of the federal loan programs, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
“This particular attack is intended to really bully and affect a small group,” said Jenny Muñiz, senior policy advisor at Latino civil rights organization UnidosUS, but “any attempt to restrict federal financial aid would have ripple effects on all students.”
House Education chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, supports the idea. “Siphoning off resources that could be used for legal students in order to cover illegal migrants is irresponsible and wrong,” she said in a statement provided by aides.
The proposal is part of Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation, crafted largely by veterans of Trump’s first administration. Proposals such as mass deportation have gotten far more attention.
Students such as Connor Greenwall, a U.S. citizen, are surprised and alarmed when told about it.
The ASU junior from Globe works 40 hours a week while attending school full time. Federal loans cover about 40% of his tuition, he said, and “if I was not getting any federal student loan assistance, it would be impossible for me to attend college.”
Although Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, over half of its authors served in his White House or on his transition teams, according to a New York Times analysis.
Chief architects include Russell Vought, his previous and incoming White House budget director; and two key players on his second term immigration team: “border czar” Tom Homan and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general who served under Trump as acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and acting secretary of Homeland Security, authored the section of Project 2025 on student loans, in-state tuition and immigrant students.
Heritage has boasted that Trump implemented two-thirds of its 2016 recommendations in his first year as president.
“I don’t think we have any reason to believe that the Trump Department of Homeland Security or Department of Education would be less anti-immigrant than what you see in Project 2025,” said E.J. Fagan, a University of Illinois Chicago political science professor who studies think tanks.
The incoming chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, hasn’t spoken publicly about the idea.
He was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in the impeachment over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Like other conservatives, he has blasted higher education as overly liberal and too focused on diversity.
The Arizona in-state tuition policy had mixed support when voters approved it by 51% in 2021. The margin was about 60,000 votes out of 2.5 million.
Under federal law, states that provide college benefits to students who are in the country unlawfully must offer the same benefits to out-of-state students who are U.S. citizens.
Proposition 308 got around the rule by providing in-state tuition only for students who attended high school in Arizona for at least two years and graduated from an Arizona high school.
About 1,000 undocumented students graduate from Arizona high schools each year, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.
Just over 9,500 undocumented students and students protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program currently attend public colleges in Arizona, according to the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, an advocacy group of 550 university presidents, including those of ASU and NAU.
Cutting off federal loans for every student would have dire implications, said Katherine Meyer, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the left-leaning Brookings Institution.
“That’s a signal to students that this is not an institution that is supported by the federal government and … they shouldn’t go to this college,” she said. “It makes it very difficult for the institution to stay in business. They really do rely on federal aid subsidizing some amount of education.”
But a no-loan policy would achieve the goal: forcing Arizona and the other states to “consider prohibiting undocumented students and DACA recipients from accessing in-state tuition,” according to a report from the libertarian Niskanen Center. Arizona ranks 34th in state financial aid per undergraduate, averaging $125 per student.
Federal loans account for a much bigger share of financial aid.
ASU, UA and NAU students borrowed more than $7,000 on average in the 2022-2023 academic year. The average at private and community colleges in Arizona was over $5,000.
“I don’t think you should be trying to make it harder for undocumented people to get an education,” said Grae Shoup, an ASU student from Oregon who gets a quarter of their costs covered by federal loans. “You are hurting students that have nothing to do with the policy with your views on immigration. I hate this policy, and I don’t want it.”
Ray Serrano, director of research and policy at the League of United Latin American Citizens, said cutting off federal loans for every college student would drive a wedge between U.S. citizens and their undocumented classmates.
Under that scenario, he said, “the mere presence of undocumented (students) or DACA recipients on their college campus is a threat to their financial well-being.”
When Trump took office in January 2016, some universities rallied behind undocumented students by declaring themselves “sanctuary” campuses, vowing to resist cooperation with immigration authorities unless compelled by law.
“I understand the politics of why there’s a heavy push to remove undocumented folks, but I think in the (case) of undocumented students … they’re really trying to better themselves, to better their communities,” Serrano said, “and the ripple effect from their education is very vast.”
Meyer, the Brookings scholar, said Trump could probably cut off student loans by executive order, though congressional action would make such a move harder to challenge in court.
Either path would invite a legal fight, said Monica Andrade, director of state policy and legal strategy for the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “We’re just really prepared to collaborate with legal advocacy groups to mount any of those challenges,” Andrade said. “People are going to do coalition-building and really try to prevent the enforcement of these policies.”