Heritage says states should charge tuition to illegal alien children

Children should not receive a free education at America’s public schools unless they are lawfully present in the United States, a new report from The Heritage Foundation contends.

States and local governments have been “overwhelmed with costs that flow from illegal immigration, including public education,” Lora Ries, director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center and author of the report, tells The Daily Signal.

The new report, titled “Every State Should Challenge Plyler v. Doe: Time to End Free Education for Illegal Alien K-12 Students,” argues that the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe should be overturned. It presents model state legislation to allow schools to charge tuition to students who are illegally present in the U.S.

Plyler v. Doe

In Plyler v. Doe, the court ruled 5-4 that a school district could not charge tuition to illegal alien students because it would violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The clause requires states to treat all residents as equal under the law.

Ries says that charging tuition to an unlawful resident is similar to the policies of state colleges and universities that charge out-of-state students higher tuition.

Similarly, about half the states across the U.S. allow counties to charge families tuition if the family does not reside in the school district.

“If you’re charging tuition for a U.S. citizen and lawful permanent resident student from outside the school district to attend a school district, but you’re not charging illegal alien students, then you’re treating U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents worse—it is not equal protection,” Ries says.

Limited Resources

The 34-page report points out the limited resources of most school districts and the challenges that arise when an illegal alien student arrives at a school and requires additional attention or specialized resources due to language barriers.

“States, which are responsible for K-12 education, have a clear basis to, at a minimum, charge tuition for illegal alien students to recoup these costs, maintain a manageable teacher-to-student ratio in the classrooms so that students may receive a quality education, and collect the resources needed for the additional supplies and classroom facilities,” the report states.

Many public schools in the U.S. experienced a spike in enrollments of English as a Second Language students amid the influx of migrants crossing the southern border during the four years of the Biden administration.

In California, for example, there were over 1.1 million students enrolled as English Language Learners in 2021, according to the Migration Policy Institute. By 2024, data shows over 3.5 million immigrant children living in California, indicating a significant rise in public school enrollment.

Legislation

In 2025, Tennessee, Texas, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, and New Jersey introduced measures to either charge illegal aliens tuition or report on students unlawfully present in the U.S. However, none of the bills became law.

If a state does succeed in passing legislation to charge tuition to illegal immigrant children, “of course they will be sued, and Plyler should be overturned,” Ries says.

As the title of the Heritage report indicates, the issue of charging tuition is one for “every state” to determine, but the report includes model legislation for states to consider.

Heritage’s model legislation requires a student to show proof of legal residency when registering for school, in order to receive free tuition.

If a student cannot provide proof of legal residency, they may still be enrolled in the school, but “the district shall collect, either from the student, third parties, or local government funding sources, the standard nonresident tuition rate applied to all nonresident students who are admitted to the school.”

The model legislation also includes annual reporting requirements to ensure the law is being followed.

Free K-12 education is “one of many benefits downstream from illegal immigration,” according to Ries, “and if we want to really reduce illegal immigration, we need to turn off those downstream benefits.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]