No More TRIO Access for Undocumented Students in California and Oregon

A recent policy shift barring undocumented students from federal college prep and persistence programs got little attention amid rapid-fire federal policy changes. But it’s one that experts and college administrators argue could have significant repercussions for students’ academic outcomes.

The Department of Education announced late last month that it revoked waivers previously allowing undocumented students in California and Oregon to participate in TRIO programs. Department officials asserted that the programs’ resources shouldn’t be used to support noncitizens. The move marks a significant loss for undocumented students who benefited from the programs’ intensive advising and other supports designed to help first-generation and low-income students navigate college.

These students had access to TRIO as a result of the Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth, or P3 program. Congress established the program in 2014 as a way to give grant recipients, including states and colleges, more flexibility to use their funding to better serve student at risk of dropping out of school or college, homeless youth and other disadvantaged groups by waiving some requirements.

The Biden administration gave states the option to use the P3 program to include noncitizens in their TRIO programs. California and Oregon took the federal government up on its offer and got approval to use the program to waive student eligibility requirements for TRIO programs in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

But under Trump, the Education Department was quick to rescind the waivers.

“American taxpayer dollars will no longer be used to subsidize illegal immigrants through Department of Education programs,” Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron said in a news release from the department. “The TRIO Program was designed to provide support and guidance to disadvantaged Americans as they navigate the road to and through postsecondary education. The department will not allow the true purpose of the program to be corrupted to advance an American-last agenda.”

Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, applauded the decision as “restoring opportunities for underserved American students who want to pursue a baccalaureate education” in a statement earlier this month.

“As college costs skyrocket, the chance to pursue postsecondary education seems increasingly out of reach for many students; schools in Democrat-led states shouldn’t make it any harder to achieve that dream by providing services to illegal aliens over Americans,” Walberg wrote.

In contrast, advocates for undocumented students are mourning the move.

Antoinette Flores, director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank, noted that TRIO programs provide everything from academic tutoring and advising to support for students trying to understand their financial options to pay for college. The pilot was also intended as an “experiment” to test whether waiving certain requirements and regulatory barriers to these programs improves student success.

“Some students will in theory lose access to services that they receive now or not be eligible for them in the future,” she said. Also, now “we won’t know what the outcomes were of the pilot.”

Flores also doesn’t buy the Trump administration’s legal reasoning for quashing the waivers.

Letters from the Education Department to the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission and the California Higher Education Collaborative cites Trump’s February executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” as justification for rescinding the waivers. In the order, Trump claims it’s illegal to provide taxpayer-funded benefits to undocumented people under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

But Flores argued that the law defines federal public benefits as direct payments for higher education or other public services to an “individual, household, or family entity unit,” whereas the waivers went to colleges so federal funds weren’t doled out to undocumented individuals.

“There actually are no limitations in federal law from this occurring,” Flores said. “On the contrary, the grant agreement itself invited institutions or states to waive this particular regulation, and so from my vantage point, both California and Oregon were operating within the law and properly using funds.”

Early Worries

The director of a TRIO student support services program at a California institution worried early on that using the P3 program in this way would come back to bite the states if Trump were re-elected.

“I was very nervous from the first [Trump] administration that if he or somebody with his vision would come back to power, they would definitely use it against students or even institutions,” said the director, who requested anonymity to avoid bringing attention to their program. “I want the best and the most we can provide students. I am also overprotective” and prefer “caution when it comes to stuff like this.”

Similar concerns emerged when some undocumented student advocates made a broader push for these students to have access to TRIO programs under the Biden administration. The Council for Opportunity in Education, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, and other major organizations sent a letter to then–secretary of education Miguel Cardona in 2021 advocating for the change.

Three years later, in winter 2024, the Education Department seemed to heed the call and proposed making noncitizens eligible for three TRIO programs—Upward Bound, Talent Search and Educational Opportunity Centers—if students enrolled in or planned to enroll in high schools in the United States, its territories or freely associated states and met other eligibility criteria. Those specific programs were chosen because they serve students in public K-12 schools, which are open to all students, regardless of immigration status.

But while some undocumented students’ advocates celebrated the proposal as a win, others urged the Biden administration to hold off for fear of Republican backlash.

Ultimately, the department nixed the plan in rules finalized in December, after Trump won. The agency gave various rationales, including that the policy change could cause administrative burden. But some onlookers, while disappointed for their students, interpreted the move as a pragmatic response to the incoming administration, which would likely reverse undocumented students’ access to TRIO programs or could penalize TRIO programs for admitting them.

Fears that TRIO programs could be targeted remain.

“We keep falling back to ‘TRIO is inscribed into law,’ the Higher Education Act,” the California program director said. “We keep going back to Congress created us, so Congress is the only one that can get rid of us.”

What Happens Now

Now, California and Oregon colleges that opened programs to undocumented students are figuring out how to respond now that the waivers are gone.

The anonymous program director is reassured by the fact that their TRIO student support services program doesn’t log students’ citizenship statuses in any database, so the government wouldn’t be able to find students through the program’s data. An estimated 4 percent of students who have participated in the program were undocumented.

But the program is shifting back to asking students about citizenship status as an eligibility requirement on its application. Program staff are also going to pay attention to whether low-income students who apply only receive state aid, not federal aid, as a “flag” that they may be undocumented. At the same time, the program doesn’t verify students’ citizenship statuses, so students could choose not to be truthful, and students already participating in TRIO can continue, as far as the director is aware, unless the department says otherwise.

The director plans to refer undocumented students to other services, like local immigrant support organizations, lawyers and the institution’s undocumented student center, and potentially collaborate with the center or other organizations so students can still benefit from some of the distinct services that TRIO staff offer.

College TRIO programs help low-income and first-generation students “navigate the system, not only the academic transition—the social transition and financial aid and college requirements and registering for this and registering for that,” the director said. “It’s very easy to miss steps or miss deadlines and hinder your path to graduation.”

Flores doesn’t see any indication that California or Oregon are going to stand up against the Education Department’s decision to revoke the waivers.

“There are so many different actions that are occurring that need to be challenged,” she said, “and this one appears to not be one of them. This one maybe has kind of slipped under the radar amidst everything else.”