The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to scrap New Jersey rules allowing illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges, even though Americans living outside of New Jersey are charged higher tuition.
“Imagine being denied the opportunity of education in your own country,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said, according to a Department of Justicenews release.
“By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, the state of New Jersey is doing just that,” he said.
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division added that “this is a simple matter of federal law: in New Jersey and nationwide, colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens.”
Federal prosecutors are suing New Jersey for offering qualifying noncitizen residents in-state college tuition and state-funded benefits, the latest state the Trump administration has accused of discriminating against out-of-state Americans in its anti-immigration crackdown.…pic.twitter.com/AlxkIX3OWB
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews)May 1, 2026
“This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country,” he said.
The release said that the Justice Department has filed similar lawsuits against other states, with complaints in Texas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma being successful in ending policies that gave illegal immigrants reduced tuition.
The department is currently suing Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, Nebraska, and California, which have similar policies.
“Congress made a legislative judgment that illegal aliens in our Nation cannot receive resident tuition benefits that are denied to U.S. citizens residing in other states… There are no exceptions. Yet New Jersey has ignored this legislative command for over a decade,” thecomplaintsaid.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
