Thread: Democrats: DeVos overstepped by blocking emergency aid to undocumented college studen

Democrats: DeVos overstepped by blocking emergency aid to undocumented college students

By Michael Stratford
Politico April 27, 2020, 4:00 PM EDT











Democrats: DeVos overstepped by blocking emergency aid to undocumented college students


Congressional Democrats say Education Secretary Betsy DeVos exceeded her authority by cutting undocumented college students out of access to emergency federal aid to cover expenses like food, housing and child care.


Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) urged DeVos in a letter Monday to reverse her restrictions because the economic rescue law, H.R. 748 (116), included no explicit limitations on which students could receive $6 billion in emergency cash grants. The senators said that the grants should be available to hundreds of thousands of students illegally brought to the country as children but shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.


“The language in the CARES Act allows DACA recipients to receive these emergency financial aid grants, at the discretion of each individual institution,” the senators wrote to DeVos. They argued that DeVos’ policy was “unauthorized” because the stimulus law includes “no prohibitions against DACA recipients receiving funding.”


The letter was signed by 26 other senators, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).


The Education Department’s policy, laid out last week, restricts stimulus funding to those students who are eligible for federal financial aid, which includes only U.S. citizens and some legal permanent residents. It also leaves out many students in dual enrollment programs who don’t have a high school diploma.


House Democrats, in a separate letter on Monday, also asked DeVos to undo her restrictions on how colleges and universities could distribute the emergency grant aid to students. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and 72 other Democrats wrote that DeVos’ limits on the emergency funding for students “goes against the broad language of the CARES Act and the congressional intent of providing help to all students.”


“In this extraordinary time we should not be dividing students based on immigration status or unduly limiting aid,” the House lawmakers wrote in the letter. “This pandemic has upended the lives of all students from coast to coast, and colleges and universities should have the flexibility to help those in need.”


The dispute over whether undocumented students can access the emergency stimulus funding comes as the U.S. Supreme Court reviews President Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to end the DACA program.


Higher education leaders had specifically asked the Education Department for advice on whether they could use the money to assist DACA recipients. But DeVos’ guidance surprised some college leaders because it was far narrower than they expected.


"It is absurd that Democrats want to send U.S. taxpayer money to noncitizens, especially given how many American students are in need of this emergency relief," said Angela Morabito, an Education Department spokesperson. "Colleges and universities have the freedom to help their DACA students, they just cannot use U.S. federal taxpayer dollars in order to do so."


Aides to DeVos have said that her guidance is consistent with the economic relief law.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats...200011799.html

Every illegal alien, undocumented "student", needs to be disenrolled from our schools...ALL of them!

No more two sets of rules for these criminal trespassing illegal aliens whether they came here 30 years ago or 30 seconds ago!

Get them OUT of our schools now. They need to self deport and go home to their own schools.