The Trump administration announced students in the United States illegally will be prohibited from receiving the $6 billion in emergency cash assistance to pay for child care, housing, and healthcare.
The CARES Act relief package provided $12 billion in funding to colleges and universities, with nearly half of that earmarked for cash grants to individual students.
Participants in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which include students who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, are ineligible to receive emergency funding, according to the Department of Education on Tuesday.
“The CARES Act makes clear that this taxpayer-funded relief fund should be targeted to U.S. citizens, which is consistently echoed throughout the law,” a spokeswoman for the Education Department said, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Education Department guidelines limit the disbursement of federal emergency funds to students who filed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Illegal immigrant students are not eligible for most federal aid.
There are an estimated 700,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. President Trump announced an end to DACA in late 2017, but legal challenges have kept the program alive for two and a half years. The Supreme Court is currently considering whether the program should continue, with an opinion expected by June.
A former assistant secretary at the Education Department, David Bergeron, has pushed back against the Education Department’s announcement, saying, “The Department of Education owns this decision. Period,” and that the CARES Act left Secretary Betsy DeVos flexibility to allow grants for DACA students.
