Federal judge strikes down Illinois tuition benefits for illegal immigrants in Trump administration victory

A federal judge ruled Illinois laws granting in-state tuition, financial aid, and scholarships to illegal immigrants are unconstitutional, permanently blocking Governor JB Pritzker from enforcing them.

U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, a Trump appointee sitting in the Southern District of Illinois, granted the Justice Department's motion for summary judgment on Friday and denied the state's motion to dismiss. McGlynn found that Illinois' in-state tuition policies, the RISE Act, and the Illinois DREAM Act are "unconstitutional and invalid" as they apply to illegal immigrants. The order permanently bars Illinois from enforcing any of the three measures, though McGlynn built in a 14-day window for the state to ask an appeals court to intervene before the injunction takes effect.

The ruling hands the Trump administration another courtroom win in its expanding legal campaign against states that extend taxpayer-funded education benefits to people living in the country illegally. The Justice Department first sued Illinois and a handful of colleges in September 2025, arguing the state violated federal law by offering in-state tuition and financial aid to illegal immigrants without making those same benefits available to all U.S. citizens regardless of where they live.

Weinhoeft: Illinois put illegal immigrants "ahead of American citizens"

U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft did not hold back after the decision. In a statement reported by Fox News, Weinhoeft framed the ruling as a straightforward enforcement of existing federal statute:

"Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer's dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law. This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens."

Rep. Mary Miller, a Republican representing Illinois, praised the decision on X. Miller cast the ruling as overdue relief for the state's own residents.

"This is a win for Illinois taxpayers and American students who were shut out while Pritzker prioritized foreigners in our country illegally."

Fox News Digital reached out to Pritzker's office for comment. No response was noted. The governor now faces a 14-day clock: either Illinois seeks emergency relief from a federal appeals court, or the permanent injunction takes hold and the state's tuition programs for illegal immigrants go dark.

DOJ sued Colorado one day before the Illinois ruling landed

McGlynn's order did not arrive in isolation. Just one day earlier, on Thursday, the Justice Department filed a separate lawsuit against Colorado over its ASSET Act and related policies, which provide lower tuition rates and state financial aid to illegal immigrants while denying those same benefits to out-of-state American citizens. More than 6,000 illegal immigrants receive in-state tuition in Colorado, the Washington Examiner reported.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward tied the Colorado action directly to a three-decade-old congressional mandate. His statement made clear the administration views these lawsuits as part of a single, coordinated enforcement effort:

"For three decades, Congress has made clear that Colorado cannot give education benefits to illegal aliens that it does not give to all American citizens. By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, Colorado is not only violating federal law but subsidizing education for illegal aliens at taxpayers' expense. Our litigation efforts will not cease until we have fulfilled President Trump's promise that illegal aliens will not obtain preferential treatment over our nation's own citizens."

A spokesperson for Colorado Governor Jared Polis pushed back, telling Fox News Digital that "the federal government seizing control of determining in-state tuition across the country is absurd." The spokesperson added that Colorado was "expanding access to education to provide students with the skills to get good-paying jobs and doubling down on strategies to save students money." That defense sidesteps the core legal question: whether a state can offer a benefit to illegal immigrants that it withholds from American citizens in other states.

The administration's legal track record has not been spotless. A Trump-appointed judge rejected a DOJ lawsuit against Minnesota's sanctuary policies earlier this year, a reminder that federal courts do not rubber-stamp every enforcement action. But the Illinois ruling marks a clear pattern of success on the tuition question specifically.

Four states down, nine lawsuits still pending

Illinois is not the first state to lose this fight. The Justice Department has already won or reached settlements in similar cases involving Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Nebraska agreed to end in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants as part of its settlement with the DOJ. Those four outcomes, plus the Illinois ruling, give the administration a five-for-five record on the tuition issue.

Nine more states still face pending federal lawsuits: Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Kansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Colorado. The New York Post noted that the breadth of the campaign spans coast to coast, targeting predominantly blue states that have enacted similar tuition carve-outs for illegal immigrants.

The legal argument running through every case is the same: federal law prohibits states from granting residency-based education benefits to illegal immigrants unless those identical benefits are also available to every U.S. citizen, regardless of home state. An out-of-state American student who moves to Illinois pays higher tuition than an illegal immigrant who lives there. McGlynn's ruling says that arrangement violates the statute Congress wrote.

That framing puts Democratic governors in an awkward position. They can argue for expanding educational access, a sympathetic pitch in the abstract, but the specific mechanism they chose gives preferential treatment to people in the country illegally over American citizens from neighboring states. That is not a policy nuance. It is the kind of two-tier system that federal law was written to prevent.

Meanwhile, the broader immigration enforcement landscape continues to move through the courts. An appeals court recently revived Trump's nationwide expedited removal policy after overturning a lower-court block, and controversies over Democratic officials' immigration decisions, including Governor Tim Walz defending his pardon of a convicted child rapist who was subsequently deported, continue to fuel public frustration with the left's approach to immigration enforcement.

Pritzker's silence speaks for itself

Pritzker has not responded publicly to the ruling. His office did not reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment. For a governor who signed the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act into the state's legal framework, the silence is notable. Illinois taxpayers funded the tuition subsidies. Illinois students competed for financial aid alongside illegal immigrants who, under federal law, were never supposed to receive those benefits in the first place.

McGlynn's 14-day stay gives Illinois a narrow path to the appellate courts. But the DOJ's winning streak on this issue, five favorable outcomes across five states, with no losses on the tuition question, suggests the federal government's legal position is not the one under pressure. The states that built tuition programs around illegal immigration are the ones scrambling.

When a state treats an illegal immigrant better than an American citizen from the next state over, the law has a word for that. And now a federal court has used it: unconstitutional.