An out-of-state American student at the University of Delaware pays approximately $42,470 a year in tuition. An illegal immigrant living in Delaware pays approximately $15,740. Same classrooms. Same professors. Same degree. One of them broke federal law to be here.
The Department of Justice just filed a lawsuit to end that arrangement.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. announced the federal complaint on Saturday, marking the first lawsuit of its kind targeting a public university directly. The University of Delaware's policy grants in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens who establish Delaware residency — while legal American citizens from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, or anywhere else in the country pay nearly three times as much.
The gap is not subtle. It's $26,730 per year, every year, handed to people who aren't authorized to be in the country — at the direct expense of families who followed the rules.
Woodward remarked, "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," he said, as reported by The College Fix. He added that "Congress long ago made clear that states cannot give reduced tuition to illegal aliens not available to all Americans."
The legal basis isn't new. Federal law already states 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." The University of Delaware apparently decided that statute was more of a suggestion.
The university's response was exactly what you'd expect. "The University of Delaware is aware of the complaint filed today by the U.S. Department of Justice, and we are reviewing it carefully." Reviewing it carefully. Not defending the policy. Not explaining why a kid from Virginia should subsidize tuition discounts for someone who crossed the border illegally. Just reviewing.
This isn't an isolated case, either. The Trump administration has filed 26 lawsuits over the past two years against states running similar tuition schemes. Six of those — in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, and Kansas — have already resulted in favorable orders. The courts keep agreeing: you can't offer illegal immigrants a better deal than American citizens at taxpayer-funded institutions.
The university might argue this is about access to education. The federal statute says otherwise. And 180,000 undocumented students affected by these rulings suggests the scope of the problem isn't a rounding error — it's a policy choice that states and universities made deliberately, betting Washington wouldn't notice or wouldn't care.
What makes the University of Delaware special is the symbolism. This is Joe Biden's alma mater. The school that named an institute after him. The institution most associated with the man who spent four years telling Americans that border enforcement was cruel and unnecessary. His university took that philosophy and turned it into a tuition schedule.