DOJ Sues University for Penalizing Americans with High Tuition, Putting ‘Illegal Aliens Over U.S. Citizens’

The University of Delaware is being sued by the Department of Justice for giving illegal immigrants a tuition discount to which they are not entitled.

The school allows illegal immigrants to qualify for the lower tuition rate charged for Delaware residents, according to a Justice Department news release.

American citizens who do not live in Delaware do not qualify, the release said, leading to a situation where illegal immigrants are given preference over Americans.

The University of Delaware allows illegal immigrants to attend at a tuition rate of $15,740, the rate for state residents. The rate for students from outside of the state is $42,470.

“This Department of Justice’s efforts will not cease until we have challenged every state law or university policy that gives preferential treatment to illegal aliens over our Nation’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. said in the release.

“Congress long ago made clear that states cannot give reduced tuition to illegal aliens not available to all Americans. When a state Attorney General allows her own state to violate federal law, this department must step in to enforce it,” he continued.

Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said that “this is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens.”

🚨 NOW: The Department of Justice has SUED the University of Delaware to abolish their in-state tuition for illegal aliens

Stop DISCRIMINATING against US citizens! Any school who does this needs to be severed and defunded 🇺🇸

DOJ says Delaware gives in-state tuition to illegal… pic.twitter.com/H6bfiZlY4C

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 2, 2026

“This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country,” he added.

The lawsuit seeks to end the current policy and prevent the college from adopting a new policy to disregard the law.

The lawsuit noted that the “preferential treatment” Delaware grants illegal immigrants “is squarely prohibited by federal law mandating that ‘an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State… for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit… without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.’”

The lawsuit also argued that giving illegal immigrants a public benefit needs a state legislature to act. That did not happen in this case.

The news release noted that it now has filed 26 lawsuits to stop giving tuition discounts to illegal immigrants.

The release said Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, and Kansas have had to modify their policies.

Lawsuits are pending against Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Arkansas, and Utah.

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