The average cost of educating a K-12 student exceeds $15,000 per year. More than 29 percent of students are from households headed by illegal immigrants.
Some leaders across the country are taking a preemptive strike on overcrowded schools and local property tax hikes despite a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined all children, regardless of legal status, are entitled to a free K–12 education.
When state legislatures reconvene next month, elected representatives will discuss laws that shift the costs of educating illegal immigrants to the federal government, require proof of U.S. citizenship for school choice voucher programs, or deny deeply discounted in-state college tuition rates to undocumented residents.
The rest of the country—whether school districts that have been inundated with new students and the massive expense of educating so many children that are still learning English, or sanctuary cities and counties and the immigration advocacy agencies that support them—will all be watching closely.
Texas Representative Ben Bumgarner, a Republican, filed a bill calling for the federal government to reimburse school districts in his state for money spent on educating undocumented children.
The bill will be introduced to the legislature in January and, if passed, would take effect ahead of the 2026–2027 academic year.
Another bill in Texas, filed by fellow Republican Rep. Terry Leo Wilson, would end in-state college and university admission for illegal immigrants starting in the fall 2025 semester.
Legislators are expected to discuss the measure next month.
A similar proposal in Florida was filed in Tallahassee earlier this month.
Its sponsor, Republican Sen. Randy Fine, said his previous legislation to end in-state tuition benefits to illegal immigrants failed in previous years, but this time, there might be some headwinds with the national election results.
“It’s immoral to ask families who struggle to buy groceries to pay $45 million for college for people who shouldn’t be here,” Fine told The Epoch Times.
“Every dollar spent on illegals is a dollar wasted. Immigration was the No. 1 issue for Republicans in this election.”
The in-state tuition rate for Florida’s 12 public universities and 28 colleges is $6,000 annually, compared to almost $21,000 for out-of-state residents, according to the State University System of Florida website.
Those figures don’t include housing, meals, and other expenses.
In Tennessee, the proposed Education Freedom Act of 2025, which funds private school tuition with public tax dollars, excludes students who are not legal residents of the United States.
In Oklahoma, Department of Education Ryan Walters recently sent a bill for $474,900,000 to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I demand Oklahoma taxpayers be reimbursed for the impact illegal immigration presents to our state. We cannot effectively budget or allocate critical resources when we have no accounting of the cost that illegal immigration places on our schools,” his Oct. 30 letter said.
The Epoch Times contacted Harris’s office for a response.
In August, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White publicized a report titled “How Illegal Immigration Hurts Taxpayers.”
The report estimates the costs to Magnolia State public schools at $25 million annually, with health care for illegal immigrants tallying $77 million.
“Mississippi’s illegal immigration problem is spiraling out of control and is costing taxpayers millions,” White said in an August news release.
“Our public schools, hospitals, and prisons will continue to lose massive sums of money that we could have spent on our own citizens if this problem is not solved.”
In Massachusetts, the Saugus Public School Committee adopted an admissions policy last year requiring parents or legal guardians to provide proof of legal residency within district boundaries and proof of identity to include a U.S. passport, state driver’s license, or another official state or federal government identification card.
This prompted a lawsuit from children’s and civil rights advocacy organizations even though the policy states “no child who actually resides in Saugus will be denied access to school because of his or her immigration status or the immigration status of his or her parent(s)/guardian(s),” according to court papers filed in Essex County Superior Court in September.
The plaintiffs, the Massachusetts Advocates for Children Inc. and the Lawyers for Civil Rights, state in their complaint that the policy disproportionately excludes immigrant children and “violates rights guaranteed to immigrant and mixed-status families.”
The next motion hearing in that case is scheduled for Jan. 16.
Nationally, the average cost to educate a public school student exceeds $15,000 per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That expense varies by state, ranging from about $9,500 in Utah to nearly $30,000 in New York State.
New York City, with a significant population of illegal immigrants, leads all school districts at about $36,000. Those figures are based on data from 2022, the most recent year available.
The Center for Immigration Studies reported last year that in 2021, 29 percent (3.2 million) of public school students were from households headed by an illegal immigrant.
That figure, which is based on U.S. Census Bureau data, “does not reflect the ongoing border crisis and huge influx that began in 2021.”
In 2022 alone, more than 278,000 immigrants under the age of 24 entered the United States illegally and applied for asylum hearings, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
The National Immigration Law Center estimates that 98,000 undocumented students graduate from high school each year.
A March 2023 study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that illegal immigration in the United States has cost taxpayers $150 billion, nearly half of which was spent on K–12 and higher education at the local and state levels.
The Common Sense Institute of Colorado reported that Denver has been a popular destination for illegal immigrants in the past two years, with 16,197 migrant children enrolling in that metro area’s public schools, costing taxpayers about $228 million annually.
In the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler vs. Doe, the justices ruled in a 5–4 decision that all children, regardless of their citizenship, are entitled to free public education under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
A Mexican American organization that provided legal and educational support to immigrants filed the suit after the Texas Legislature allowed the Tyler Independent School District to charge a $1,000 annual tuition for students who weren’t U.S. citizens, according to the Library of Congress.
The Century Foundation recently published a guide for protecting migrant students from deportation.
It notes that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is expected to avoid conducting fieldwork in schools and other protected areas, though it still advises school personnel to note all identification information and documentation presented by federal authorities before asking them to wait outside the building while legal counsel and the affected child’s parents or guardians are contacted.
“The task is simple. Keep students in school, maintain enrollment and funding, and, most importantly, protect the children in your communities so that they can learn and grow into thriving adults,” Century Foundation’s Dec. 4 advisement said.
The Century Foundation advocates for providing migrant children access to free public education and, on its website, states that the influx of migrant children comes at a time when enrollment of U.S. students was declining in school districts across the nation, including New York City and Chicago.
These new students, it says, can help school districts boost enrollment-based aid and avoid laying off staff and closing or merging schools.
“Further financial hits to districts will occur if immigrant students stay home because they are afraid to come to school,” the advisement said.
Ira Mehlman, speaking for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the circumstances surrounding the 1982 Supreme Court decision were quite different than today.
That situation was based on events at one small school community in the late 1970s, compared to an unprecedented border crisis that impacted schools and municipalities around the nation on a massive scale.
“Fast forward 42 years,” Mehlman told The Epoch Times. “You can make the case that it’s a significant burden now.”
A reversal of Plyler vs. Doe could prompt U. S. public schools across the country to turn undocumented students away or give schools leverage to negotiate with state or federal education departments for reimbursement.
The magnitude of this issue is way beyond who should cover the estimated $15,000 per student whose parents don’t have incomes or contribute to the property tax streams that fund local schools in many states.
It’s also about how many new learning facilities were needed yesterday to accommodate the influx, how many existing schools are not being expanded to avoid overcrowding, and how schools can’t hire enough language teachers fast enough, Mehlman said.
“It also impacts the other kids,” he said, “Even money can’t solve these problems.”
The National Immigration Law Center (NILC), which supports Plyler vs. Doe, is preparing for any pushback on that decision at the state or federal court level.
It has partnered with 34 agencies, including the National Education Association teachers union and the AFL-CIO, as part of its “Education for All” campaign.
“The court’s decision reinforced what we already knew: It’s in our collective interest to ensure that every child has access to K–12 public school, no matter how much money their parents have, what they look like, or where they were born,” NILC’s public campaign announcement states on its website.
“Access to education for every one of us is a cornerstone of a healthy society and a bedrock of our country’s democracy.”