The Claim

Revoked waivers that allowed certain colleges to divert federal funds intended for low-income students and students with disabilities to illegal immigrants.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the administration revoked federal waivers that had enabled colleges to redirect funding — money earmarked for low-income students and students with disabilities — toward undocumented immigrants instead.

What is being implied but not asserted?

The word “divert” implies that funds were taken away from their intended beneficiaries and given to unauthorized recipients. The phrasing suggests a zero-sum dynamic: every dollar spent on an undocumented student was a dollar stolen from a low-income or disabled American student. The claim also implies this was a widespread practice and that the administration intervened to stop an abuse of taxpayer funds.

What is conspicuously absent?

The claim omits: (1) that the “waivers” affected only two states — California and Oregon — not colleges nationwide; (2) that the programs in question were TRIO support services, not financial aid or direct cash payments; (3) that TRIO services include tutoring, counseling, and college navigation assistance, not tuition grants; (4) that undocumented students constituted approximately 4% of TRIO participants in affected programs; (5) that no funds were “diverted” from eligible students — the waivers expanded the pool of students served, they did not reduce services to existing beneficiaries; (6) that the Higher Education Act contains no statutory citizenship requirement for TRIO participation; and (7) that the Biden administration itself declined to finalize a formal rule expanding TRIO eligibility to undocumented students, meaning the P3 waivers were a narrow, pilot-stage accommodation.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The Department of Education did revoke Performance Partnership Pilot (P3) waivers affecting California and Oregon institutions on March 27, 2025. The Department issued a press release announcing it had revoked P3 waivers that had allowed colleges in these two states to include undocumented students in TRIO program services. California’s waiver had been in effect since November 2022 (set to expire September 2026); Oregon’s since October 2023 (set to expire September 2027). ¹

TRIO programs provide academic support services, not direct financial aid. Federal TRIO programs — authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act — provide tutoring, academic counseling, college navigation assistance, and career guidance to low-income, first-generation, and disabled students. In FY2024, TRIO was funded at $1.191 billion and served more than 880,000 students nationally. TRIO services are institutional grants that flow to colleges, not direct payments to individual students. The P3 waiver agreements explicitly prohibited participating institutions from providing financial aid, cash payments, or any other direct money benefits to undocumented participants. ²

The Higher Education Act contains no statutory citizenship requirement for TRIO programs. According to EdTrust and nonfederal negotiators during 2024 rulemaking, “there is no statutory restriction that requires TRIO providers to offer services only to students who are citizens.” The citizenship/residency requirement for TRIO existed only at the regulatory level — in Department of Education regulations, not in the statute itself. This is why the P3 waiver mechanism could legally be used to waive the requirement. ³

Undocumented students are already ineligible for federal financial aid. Students without legal immigration status cannot receive Pell Grants, federal student loans, SEOG grants, or Federal Work-Study. DACA recipients are also ineligible for Title IV financial aid, even if they have a Social Security number. The waivers in question had nothing to do with financial aid eligibility — they concerned only TRIO support services. ⁴

The Biden administration itself declined to formalize expanded TRIO eligibility for undocumented students. In December 2024, the Biden Education Department finalized new TRIO rules but explicitly dropped a proposed expansion that would have made undocumented students eligible for certain pre-postsecondary TRIO programs (Upward Bound, Talent Search, Educational Opportunity Centers). Officials stated the proposal was “too narrow in scope” because it excluded Student Support Services and McNair Scholars, and that selective eligibility would “create confusion” and “increase administrative burden.” ⁵

Strong Inferences

The characterization of “diversion” misrepresents how TRIO funding works. TRIO grants fund institutional capacity to provide services. When a college serves an additional undocumented student through TRIO counseling, it does not reduce services to eligible students — the institution’s grant amount is fixed. The word “divert” implies a finite pool of benefits was redirected from deserving recipients to undeserving ones. In practice, programs reported that undocumented students constituted approximately 4% of participants. One California TRIO program director noted this did not reduce capacity for other eligible students. The analogy would be a tutoring center adding a few more students to its roster — the other students still receive their appointments. ⁶

The action was driven by Executive Order 14218, not by evidence of program abuse. The Department’s letters to the California Higher Education Collaborative and Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission cited Trump’s February 19, 2025 executive order “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” as the basis for revocation. The Department invoked the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, claiming TRIO services constituted “federal public benefits” from which undocumented individuals must be excluded. However, New America and other analysts noted the Department provided no evidence of actual statutory violations or program abuse — the waivers had been lawfully granted under the P3 authority Congress created in 2014. ⁷

The legal classification of TRIO as a “federal public benefit” under PRWORA is disputed. PRWORA restricts undocumented immigrants’ access to “federal public benefits,” but the definition of that term has been contested for decades. A 1997 Clinton-era Dear Colleague Letter exempted certain education programs. The Trump Department of Education rescinded this letter on July 10, 2025, asserting that postsecondary education programs — including TRIO — are federal public benefits subject to PRWORA restrictions. Legal scholars, including New America analysts, argue PRWORA targets direct payments to individuals, not institutional grants providing support services. The matter remains legally unsettled. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The administration did revoke P3 waivers affecting TRIO programs in California and Oregon — that part is factually accurate. But nearly every other element of the claim is misleading.

First, the word “divert” fundamentally mischaracterizes what happened. TRIO grants fund institutions to provide support services. When California and Oregon colleges included undocumented students in TRIO tutoring and counseling sessions, they were expanding service delivery, not redirecting resources away from low-income or disabled students. No evidence has been presented that any eligible American student lost TRIO services because an undocumented student received tutoring. The undocumented participants constituted roughly 4% of the affected programs’ enrollment.

Second, the claim says “federal funds intended for low-income students and students with disabilities” were diverted to “illegal immigrants.” This implies the programs involved direct financial assistance. They did not. TRIO provides counseling, tutoring, and college navigation — not grants, loans, or cash. The P3 waiver agreements explicitly prohibited any direct financial benefits to undocumented participants.

Third, the claim implies a nationwide problem requiring intervention. In reality, only two states — California and Oregon — had these waivers, operating under a congressionally authorized pilot program (P3) designed specifically to test flexible approaches to serving disconnected youth. The scope was narrow by design.

Fourth, the legal basis for the revocation is contested. The Higher Education Act contains no statutory citizenship requirement for TRIO. The citizenship bar exists only in regulations, which is precisely why the P3 waiver mechanism — authorized by Congress in 2014 — could legally waive it. The Department’s retroactive invocation of PRWORA to classify institutional support services as “federal public benefits” represents a novel interpretation that legal scholars dispute.

The Bottom Line

The administration did revoke P3 waivers in California and Oregon that had allowed undocumented students to receive TRIO academic support services. That action is real. But the claim that colleges were “diverting” funds “intended for low-income students and students with disabilities to illegal immigrants” is a mischaracterization of what actually occurred. TRIO programs provide tutoring and counseling, not financial aid. The waivers expanded access to support services without reducing services to eligible students. The affected population was approximately 4% of participants in programs serving only two states. The framing turns a narrow, pilot-stage accommodation into an inflammatory narrative of taxpayer funds being stolen from vulnerable Americans — a narrative unsupported by the evidence of how TRIO programs actually operate.

Footnotes

1. U.S. Department of Education, “U.S. Department of Education Revokes Waivers to California and Oregon Universities Using Federal Funding to Provide Services to Illegal Immigrants,” March 27, 2025. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-revokes-waivers-california-and-oregon-universities-using-federal-funding-provide-services-illegal-immigrants ↩

2. Congressional Research Service, “The TRIO Programs: A Primer” (R42724), updated January 6, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42724; New America, “Department of Education Revokes Access to College Support Services Based on False Claims,” April 2025. https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/department-of-education-revokes-access-to-college-support-services-based-on-false-claims/ ↩

3. EdTrust, “Federal TRIO Program Eligibility,” 2024. https://edtrust.org/press-room/federal-trio-program-eligibility/ ↩

4. Federal Student Aid, “U.S. Citizenship & Eligible Noncitizens,” 2025-2026 Federal Student Aid Handbook. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/fsa-handbook/2025-2026/vol1/ch2-us-citizenship-eligible-noncitizens ↩

5. Inside Higher Ed, “Biden administration finalizes distance ed, TRIO rules,” December 30, 2024. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/student-aid-policy/2024/12/30/biden-administration-finalizes-distance-ed-trio-rules ↩

6. Inside Higher Ed, “California and Oregon Undocumented Students Barred From TRIO,” April 21, 2025. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/04/21/california-and-oregon-undocumented-students-barred; CalMatters, “Trump tells CA colleges to stop aid to non-citizen students,” April 2025. https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2025/04/california-colleges/ ↩

7. New America, “Department of Education Revokes Access to College Support Services Based on False Claims,” April 2025. https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/department-of-education-revokes-access-to-college-support-services-based-on-false-claims/; White House, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,” February 19, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-open-borders/ ↩

8. U.S. Department of Education, “U.S. Department of Education Ends Taxpayer Subsidization of Postsecondary Education for Illegal Aliens,” July 10, 2025. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-ends-taxpayer-subsidization-of-postsecondary-education-illegal-aliens; New America, ibid. ↩