Viridiana Carrizales spent Thursday talking with panicked undocumented students and their parents.
She met with students worried about affording their summer classes and a mother vowing to get another job. Then there was a chemical engineering major, who proposed taking one class a semester instead of three, and parents asking what scholarships their children should apply for.
A day after Texas ended its in-state tuition rates at public universities for undocumented students, Carrizales, co-founder of ImmSchools, a Dallas-based nonprofit dedicated to improving immigrants’ educational experiences, heard the same question, over and over: Will we be able to pay for college?
The Department of Justice sued Texas Wednesday over its 2001 Dream Act, which grants undocumented students in-state tuition rates if they can show they have lived in the state for three years before high school graduation. Within hours, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton agreed with the federal agency that the law is unconstitutional and asked a district court to block it, which it did.
The agreement and judge’s decision to accept it has sent universities, college access advocates and immigrant rights groups scrambling to figure out what it means, how to follow it and how much undocumented students will pay. Other stakeholders were hopeful litigation would overturn the decision.
“Who does this apply to? There are certain people in different immigration statuses. Who is undocumented?” said Luis Figueroa, chief of legislative affairs at the advocacy nonprofit Every Texan. “We just know that the law has been invalidated through a signature settlement and no clear guidance [has been given] on how to move forward.”
Thousands of college students are in limbo because the ruling does not say what rate they will pay and whether currently enrolled students will have to start paying more, Carrizales said.
In meetings with concerned families on Thursday, Carrizales advised that undocumented students would likely be charged out-of-state or international student tuition rates, which can be three or four times the in-state rate.
At University of Texas at Austin, in-state tuition at the College of Liberal Arts is projected to cost nearly $5,500 this fall, according to its online tuition calculator. That price tag jumps to over $21,000 for an out-of-state or international student.
“It has been a central piece of the work that we do at ImmSchools, telling students that this is one of the few rights that we have in the state of Texas: To be able to go to college,” Carrizales said. “How can we motivate a student to continue to finish K-12 if there’s nothing for them to look up to or forward to?”
In a Friday statement, Tim Eaton, a Texas A&M University System spokesperson, said the university is “coordinating with administrators across the system to gather information needed to develop an appropriate plan to implement the requirements of the order.”
John Walls, spokesperson for University of Texas at Dallas, said the school was working to “gain a clearer understanding of the implications.”
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Abbott’s office and Paxton’s office did not respond to requests over email and telephone for more detail regarding the ruling’s implementation. Neither did representatives from the University of Texas System and the University of North Texas System.
Texas was the first state to extend in-state tuition to undocumented students when former Gov. Rick Perry signed the bipartisan measure into law in 2001. State leaders then highlighted such students’ contributions to the state’s workforce and economy. Now, 23 other states have similar laws.
More than 20,000 students, or 1.5% of all Texas college students, signed an affidavit in 2023 that indicated they are non-U.S. residents who qualify for in-state tuition, Figueroa said.
In their lawsuit, Department of Justice officials said the practice conflicts with federal law, which prohibits colleges from offering benefits to undocumented students unless citizens, including out-of-state residents, are also eligible.
Some advocacy groups, including Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha, as well as U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said they are exploring potential legal action to challenge the ruling.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio said his office was looking to see “whether somebody can take up the cause of this law besides the state of Texas,” noting that state leaders had “done a choreographed surrender to the Trump administration.”
On Friday, state House Democrats requested the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board maintain in-state tuition rates for undocumented students who are already enrolled in the upcoming school year.
“It is especially cruel and shortsighted to apply this policy change retroactively, just weeks before the start of the 2025-26 academic year. These students made plans, accepted offers and committed to their futures in good faith,” lawmakers wrote in a letter to Wynn Rosser, commissioner of higher education.
Democrats said a “temporary grandfather provision” could provide “a critical bridge” until lawmakers can take up the issue next legislative session.
The rollback could prevent many undocumented high school students, who cannot apply for federal financial aid, from attending college altogether, said Chloe Latham Sikes, deputy director of policy at the Intercultural Development Research Association, a nonprofit that supports public education.
Sikes described the ruling as a “harmful” blow to undocumented college students, who already face less support on campus after Texas’ 2023 ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives cut programs dedicated to them.
“It tugs on a deeper moral fabric of our entire state. It signals we are not valuing these young people as part of our Texas community … that they don’t belong and that this opportunity to seek a higher education is not available to them,” she said.
She wondered whether colleges will “find their own institutional resources to have an emergency aid stop gap” to help those in the middle of their education make it to graduation.
Meanwhile, Carrizales said she was asking philanthropic foundations and donors to “step up and support students.”
Texas’ in-state tuition laws are tied to how long students have lived in the state. Citizens, permanent residents or international students in some circumstances are eligible for in-state tuition if they have lived in Texas for at least a year.
Undocumented students must have lived in the state for three years before high school graduation. They must also sign an affidavit that indicates they intend to apply for permanent resident status as soon as they are able to do so.
In a Friday letter to Paxton, some organizations argued the Texas Dream Act complies with federal law because it does not grant in-state tuition to undocumented students solely on the basis of residency. They point to the state law’s additional graduation and affidavit requirements for such students.
But Robert Henneke, executive director and general counsel at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, pushed back against the groups’ reading of state and federal law.
The Texas Dream Act “was touted at the time to purposely give illegal immigrants who lived in Texas in-state tuition rates. When they did that, then that became in conflict with the federal law that said, if you’re going to do that, then you have to also do that for all U.S. citizens, regardless of residency,” he said.
Former state Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, who authored the Texas Dream Act, said he aimed to “level the playing field” for undocumented high school students who “hit a brick wall, which is the financial wall, to better their education and achieve their dreams.”
“The pathway is still a higher bar [for undocumented students] than any U.S. citizen for the purpose of paying the in-state tuition rate,” Noriega said.
He said he hoped the ruling would offer “the opportunity for a greater discussion that will clear the air on the legal aspects of this.”
Texas lawmakers have tried to repeal in-state tuition for undocumented students multiple times over the last two decades. They introduced similar bills this session, arguing that any financial aid in Texas colleges should be prioritized for U.S. citizens. Those bills did not advance to the floor.
The Texas Dream Act has faced other legal challenges. In 2022, the TPPF, on behalf of the Young Conservatives of Texas student group, sued the University of North Texas for charging out-of-state Americans higher tuition than undocumented students who live in the state. A U.S. district judge ruled the state law was unconstitutional before an appeals court reversed that ruling in 2023, allowing the school to continue its tuition policies.
The state law “helps us to protect the investments that we’ve made in our young people,” many of whom have lived in Texas their whole lives, Noriega said.
Texas could lose as much as $461 million every year in earnings and spending power with in-state tuition for undocumented students repealed, according to a 2023 estimate from the American Immigration Council.
Sikes said colleges might see drops in enrollment if undocumented students cannot afford increased tuition rates. But Henneke said he expects the ruling to be a “benefit” to universities’ revenues. State lawmakers have said undocumented students receive “an estimated $150 million in subsidies.”
“If current students who are enrolled that are illegal immigrants stay at the university, they’ll pay more. Or if they choose to leave, that spot would be available to be filled by a student who’s a Texas resident and also a U.S. citizen,” Henneke said. “There will still be a demand for our high-quality state universities.”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
