Democratic presidential candidate and former Housing and Urban Development Sec. Julián Castro has unveiled a sweeping education plan that doesn’t just eliminate tuition at public universities and community colleges, tackle student debt, and, among numerous proposals, create a nationwide “Pre-K for USA” mirrored after his own efforts as San Antonio’s mayor, but also addresses a number of issues critical to many vulnerable immigrant students. “Pending final passage of the Dream and Promise Act,” Castro’s “People First Education” plan states, immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Temporary Protected Status, and Deferred Enforced Departure programs will be able to “access federal funding and other public education programs,” as well as ensure “that citizenship status is not considered in admissions decisions by public schools or institutions of higher education.”
All three groups are currently ineligible for federal financial aid, despite paying taxes through their purchases and work permits. Some states have made in-state tuition and state financial aid accessible to DACA recipients, but overall inaccessibility to federal aid still makes higher education a burden for far too many. "It was actually a strain on my family last year," said Perla Martinez, a sophomore at Arizona State University, where the tuition rate for some DACA recipients is 150%. "My dad didn’t have that much money and neither did my mom.”
Castro’s plan would also implement significant policy change that would greatly ease the lives of undocumented students—whether or not they’re enrolled in these protections—by barring “immigration enforcement agents from conducting arrests, interviews, searches, or surveillance at schools and school bus stops.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at school bus stops aren't new—yet another indication that Castro’s campaign is listening to voices on the ground—but they are among the agency's most cruel acts.
It was just after six in the morning when armed ICE agents emerged from an unmarked white Ford to arrest 18-year-old Yefri Sorto-Hernandez as he waited at the school bus stop back in 2016. “The agents asked Yefri, who is from El Salvador, about his identity,” Think Progress reported at the time. “Yefri’s school bus arrived while he was being handcuffed. The agents led him to their car as other students on the bus watched the scene unfold.”
He would be just one of the hundreds of young immigrants arrested by ICE that year. “The arrest of Yefri and other Central American teens sent shockwaves through the undocumented immigrant community,” immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice said. “According to multiple reports, student attendance rates at some schools dropped in light of the raids and arrests.”
It’s important to note that ICE has willfully carried out these arrests even though its own policy dictates that schools should generally be off-limits to federal immigration enforcement. ICE has also skirted its own policy to arrest immigrant parents as they’ve dropped their kids off at school. “Left behind in the car with her mother, Fatima wept inconsolably as she captured video of her father's detention,” CNN reported in 2017.
Castro was the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to release a detailed immigration plan, which featured bold—and compassionate—proposals, including “a new call to end criminal penalties for migrants entering the country without permission and a plan to remove detention as a tool for most immigration enforcement.” And like in his immigration plan, Castro’s education plan seeks to put people first. “If the United States is to continue being a leader in the generations to come,” Castro said, “it means we can’t afford to waste a single student.” Check out the entire plan here.