This story originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle and is used with permission.
Colleges and universities in Oregon and California can no longer allow students without permanent legal status access to some federally funded programs meant to help disadvantaged students earn degrees, according to a recent decision from the U.S. Department of Education.
Officials from the agency rescinded Biden-era waivers Thursday that had, since 2022 in California and 2023 in Oregon, allowed universities to waive the citizenship requirement for access to federal TRIO programs.
TRIO, which is not an acronym, is a slate of eight programs meant to get students with disabilities, students who come from low-income families, first generation college-students, veterans and foster children, to and through college.
Oregon receives about $17.5 million a year to administer TRIO programs that provide admissions counseling, financial planning, tutoring and remedial coursework to get students prepared for college and attaining degrees. More than 12,000 high school and college students benefitted from TRIO programs last year, according to the Oregon TRIO Association’s 2025 factbook.
Association Director Matt Bisek referred requests for comment on the impact of the waivers to Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission.
Endi Hartigan, a spokesperson for the commission, said it’s working with Oregon colleges and universities to ensure they understand their obligations.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Education in their news release referred to the programs as taxpayer funded “entitlements” that should not be spent on students at risk of deportation.
“The Department will not allow the true purpose of the program to be corrupted to advance an American-last agenda,” the agency’s under secretary James Bergeron said in the news release.
Less than 2% of Oregon college students lack legal status, according to a 2021 report from the President’s Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, amounting to about 1,700 students.
Immigrants without permanent legal status contribute nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local taxes each year, according to a 2024 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan tax policy organization based in Washington D.C.
Oregon’s annual TRIO allocation of $17.5 million is less than President Donald Trump is estimated to have spent in taxpayer dollars on trips to his private Palm Beach resort this year. A 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office estimated each trip Trump takes to Mar-a-Lago costs taxpayers about $3.4 million. Trump has made seven trips to the resort since January, according to reporting in The Guardian, which would put the cost at more than $23 million.
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