The Trump administration opened another front Wednesday in its effort to target immigrants and root out diversity programming, promising to investigate scholarships for students brought to the United States illegally as children.
The Education Department said it would investigate five universities that offer aid to students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, who are known among immigration advocates as Dreamers. The Trump administration argues that such scholarship programs violate civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination against national origin because they are open only to DACA students and not to U.S. citizens.
Universities give aid to such students because they typically cannot access government financial aid as noncitizens, although recent political and legal scrutiny has led some universities to abandon such efforts.
Republicans have argued that the programs divert resources from American students.
“Neither the Trump administration’s America first policies nor the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s prohibition on national origin discrimination permit universities to deny our fellow citizens the opportunity to compete for scholarships because they were born in the United States,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement.
The universities under investigation are the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, and Western Michigan University.
John R. Karman III, a University of Louisville spokesman, said the university was notified of the investigation on Tuesday and was reviewing the government’s claims. The other universities under investigation either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a message.
The complaints were filed by the Legal Insurrection Clinic, a conservative group that supports “free speech, viewpoint diversity, and truly educating — not brainwashing — our students.”
“Protecting equal access to education includes protecting the rights of American-born students,” William A. Jacobson, the founder of the clinic’s Equal Protection Project and a Cornell University law professor, said in the announcement.
The Trump administration has unleashed a broad assault on colleges, including levying major funding threats against top colleges. Many of the efforts have been directed toward students who are not U.S. citizens.
Federal agents have detained some international students for pro-Palestinian speech. The government has also targeted Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, including opening a new investigation on Wednesday into the school’s participation in the student visa program.