On a bright morning in May, students wearing graduation regalia braved the Phoenix heat. Smoothing shiny gowns and fidgeting with their tasseled caps, they appeared to be on the precipice of new endeavors at an event celebrating that transition. But today was different. These graduates had gathered on the lawn of the Arizona Capitol because their futures were uncertain.
Some 2,000 undocumented students graduated from Arizona high schools this spring, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Many want to go to college and eventually join the workforce in Arizona, but a state referendum passed in 2006 continues to hinder those goals. Proposition 300 requires proof of immigration status to receive most forms of state-funded assistance, including in-state tuition rates and financial aid offered through the state. It was a damning measure for undocumented students at the time, one that derailed already delicate plans for higher education.
“It has been more than 13 years since we have seen any leadership from our state trying to change that,” said Reyna Montoya, who was 15 when the proposition was enacted. Montoya now runs the local advocacy group Aliento, which organized the Capitol demonstration.
Montoya is one of numerous advocates fighting for education reform in Arizona. The state, they say, is losing talented students, sidetracking careers, and exacerbating the trauma that comes with living as an undocumented student. Their goal is state and federal action that provides these students equal access to higher education and paths to citizenship. Meanwhile, these advocates and the students they seek to help face uncertainty about both.
Nearly 800,000 undocumented people across the U.S. have received temporary protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The program, enacted in 2012 by the Obama administration, gave recipients a work permit and a clear path to college. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services report estimated over 25,000 DACA recipients were living in Arizona in 2017 — the year President Donald Trump moved to end the program. A string of court injunctions has so far kept DACA protections in place, but no concrete path to citizenship exists for recipients.
In Arizona, the fight against DACA began immediately after its implementation. Then-governor Jan Brewer quickly attempted to bar DACA recipients from obtaining driver’s licenses and in-state tuition, but all of the state’s major public universities and a number of community colleges eventually offered the local rate to DACA students.
State Attorney General Mark Brnovich, however, challenged the colleges’ decision. In April 2018, the state Supreme Court, citing Prop 300, barred all public institutions from granting in-state tuition to DACA recipients. Students saw tuition rise by as much as 300 percent almost immediately, forcing many to reduce course loads or drop out altogether.
Just four other states explicitly deny in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants. Georgia and Indiana have laws similar to Arizona’s, while Alabama and South Carolina go further by blocking undocumented students from accessing public higher education entirely. Meanwhile, at least 18 other states offer in-state rates to local undocumented high school graduates. Some, including nearby Colorado, California, and Texas, also offer state financial aid to DACA recipients. A host of private scholarships exist to help fill the gap, but undocumented students are still barred from federal grants and loans.
The Dream and Promise Act of 2019 would offer a pathway to citizenship for some DACA recipients, but similar bills have floundered since the first DREAM Act was introduced in 2001.
Today, Montoya holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and transborder studies from Arizona State University — both of which she earned before DACA was enacted — and a master’s in education from Grand Canyon University. In 2016, she founded Aliento, an advocacy group that serves undocumented immigrants through art, political education, and community organizing.
On the morning of the May demonstration, surrounded by a circle of students, she asked the crowd to close their eyes and imagine a hypothetical situation: “It is December 2020, and there is a crowd even larger than this one. We are celebrating one of the biggest victories, because in November, we passed a ballot initiative to make in-state tuition and merit-based scholarships available to all students. Immigration will no longer determine their opportunity to dream.”
Aliento has spent the last year trying to make Montoya’s vision a reality. In January, the group brought undocumented students to the Arizona Capitol, where they met with legislators and explained how skyrocketing tuition jeopardizes their college plans. Several bipartisan measures proposing reduced rates followed, but none advanced.
For now, undocumented high school graduates must decide whether to follow private scholarship money to institutions outside the state, pursue piecemeal course loads in Arizona, or wait and hope for a legislative solution.
Blanca Sierra grew up knowing her parents moved from Hidalgo, Mexico, to Arizona so their children could have a better education. But when Sierra graduated from high school as an undocumented student in 2011, Prop 300 meant her family couldn’t afford full-time college tuition.
Speaking at Aliento’s rally at the Capitol, Sierra, 26, recalled piecing together community college courses at her father’s behest. “He told me that taking one class at a time was better than not taking anything at all,” she said. “At one point, I remember going to [a few classes at] three different community colleges, just to try and get my studies done on time.”
DACA’s introduction a year later allowed her to get a work permit and receive in-state tuition. She eventually transferred to ASU, where she completed a bachelor’s program in social work in 2017.
Sierra wanted a master’s degree in the same field, but Trump’s DACA cancellation brought a new wave of uncertainty. Nonetheless, Sierra entered an accelerated yearlong program; shortly after she began, the 2018 state Supreme Court ruling raised her tuition from the in-state rate of $16,700 to nearly $42,400.
“I was so anxious and depressed, and I couldn’t deal with any of it because I had to focus on the big picture,” Sierra said. “I really thought of just giving up.”
She didn’t. Sierra graduated with a master’s degree from ASU in May, an achievement she credits to her family’s support, a private scholarship fund, and the work permit DACA provided. Still, it’s been far from easy.
“I’m not the only one going through this situation,” she said. “If Prop 300 was not in place, it would allow for many talented students to stay in this state.”
Born in Caborca, Mexico, and raised in Phoenix, Germán Preciado Rodríguez is the only one of his four siblings not born in Arizona, and is the sole DACA recipient in his family. He’ll soon be the first to leave the state for college.
Rodríguez, 18, graduated from Phoenix’s Bioscience High School last month, and will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a full-ride scholarship this fall. It’s a dream he never saw for himself. But when he realized federal scholarships and in-state tuition weren’t options in Arizona, he began looking elsewhere.
“At first, it was tough, because I didn’t know what my alternatives were,” he said. “But working with my high school counselor helped me see that it’s actually often cheaper to go out of state, especially if you’re low-income.”
Activists argue Prop 300 drives talented students like Rodríguez away from Arizona. But he knows ending up at prestigious institutions such as MIT is not the norm.
“There’s a lot of people who are just stuck here working, trying to save up enough money to just to take one class at a time at community college,” he said. “I know I’m one of the lucky ones.”
For some students, the national fight over DACA never applied to them at all.
Juan Carlos Cisneros, 17, was brought to Arizona from Nogales, Mexico. His mother was leaving an abusive relationship and saw Phoenix as a safe haven.
DACA is limited to individuals who have continuously resided in the U.S. since June 2007 or before. Cisneros and his mother arrived in 2008, though, leaving him ineligible for the program. He also faces the same Prop 300 barriers to higher education as his classmates.
Cisneros, who graduated alongside Rodríguez at Bioscience High this spring, spent his last year of high school searching for private scholarships. He plans to attend Benedictine University, a private Catholic school just east of Phoenix, in Mesa, because of the funding it offered.
“I have benefitted from Arizona’s education system [in high school], and this is the only place I know as home,” he said. “I hope that the Arizona legislature really takes into account the amount of students that are graduating here each year.”
Veronica Carrillo, a donor relations officer for advocacy group Chicanos Por La Causa, is working to make sure undocumented students can remain in Arizona colleges. In April, Chicanos Por La Causa partnered with the state’s public universities and community colleges to raise scholarship funds. The partnership, called Keep the Dream Alive, aims to offset the cumulative $9 million tuition hike that befell 1,600 DACA students after the 2018 court decision.
“These are students who found a way to go to school in Arizona without loans, federal funding, or need-based scholarships, only to face a very large increase in tuition,” Carrillo said. “This is not a new fund, but rather a push to fill that gap.”
It’s not a permanent fix, but Carrillo said the program can sustain some students in the interim.
“We hope this is a problem that has a legislative solution coming, but we know that we can’t assume that’s the case,” she said. “There are a lot of lives being put on hold, so something needs to be done now.”
Carmen Cornejo, 55, and her husband run a law firm in Phoenix. The couple first became champions for undocumented people when they immigrated to Arizona themselves in 1991.
Cornejo’s husband, an engineer by training, obtained an H1B visa for specialized workers, which allowed the couple a straightforward path to citizenship. He accepted a position in the Phoenix area, and the two left for the U.S. hours after their wedding in Monterrey, Mexico.
“I think we always had this sensitivity about those issues, especially regarding people who are undocumented, because we realized how lucky we were,” she said.
Cornejo dived into activism in the early 2000s. To her, Prop 300 emerged from an unprecedented fear of immigration back then.
“Politically speaking, things were getting worse every year in Arizona,” she said. “The climate of fear was maybe even stronger than it is today — people were afraid to talk about the issue in classrooms, the public, you name it.”
To combat the anti-immigrant sentiment, Cornejo sought to educate others about the plight of undocumented young people, particularly those who’d been forced into the shadows to avoid deportation. After the original, bipartisan DREAM Act was introduced in 2001, she brought some young “dreamer” activists to explain their plight to Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and Representative Raúl Grijalva. The bill would have created a path to citizenship for children brought across the border by their parents, but it — like numerous subsequent versions — never passed.
It’s been almost two decades since those conversations began, and Cornejo has taken a step back from the fight. That’s partly because young DACA leaders, such as Aliento’s Montoya, have since taken the helm. It’s an expansion Cornejo welcomes, but she feels the way forward is still unclear.
“Coming from the dark ages of 2006 and before, the dreamers today are thriving — they became parents, went to school, own homes, and lead productive lives,” she said. “My hope is that a Dream Act will one day get passed. I know we have to be realistic with Trump, but that also will not be forever.”
Karina Ruiz, 34, came to Arizona from Mexico City in 1999 and was part of the state’s early cohort of “dreamers” that Cornejo remembers.
By the time she was a senior at Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, it was 2003, and no one was talking about higher education opportunities for undocumented immigrants.
“I didn’t know if I would even be able to attend college with my status,” she said. “I applied only when a counselor told me that the worst that can happen is for them to say no.”
Ruiz was accepted to ASU and began studying biochemistry. She was raising a child, immersed in her studies, and already working long hours to pay tuition when Prop 300 passed in 2006. Even with an emergency private scholarship, the price hike forced her to drop out — until a new opportunity arose with DACA in 2012.
“The first thing I thought of was going back,” she said. “I was so happy.”
But another blow came months later, when then-governor Brewer proposed the restrictions for DACA recipients. While some DACA students were able to receive in-state tuition before the 2018 ruling, Ruiz was not one of them. Like many others, her path to a degree was paved by one-class semesters and a legal wrangle that left her constantly on edge. But in 2013, a decade after graduating from high school, she completed a bachelor’s degree at ASU.
The continuing fight for in-state tuition baffles Ruiz. “If we are educated, the state has a stronger workforce. I couldn’t understand why legislators would want to stop us from driving or learning — not then, and not now,” she said. “I came to believe that the reason was simple racism. I think this state is afraid of people of color, and if we are not educated, we are easier to oppress.”
Ruiz today is executive director of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition. Her goal is to bring Prop 300 back to the ballot — to shoot it down.
“We need Arizona voters to see that what happened to us, having to quit school, that’s unjust and unfair,” Ruiz said. She envisions a future in which her grandchildren learn that their grandmother was denied affordable higher education. “I hope they won’t be able to believe it.”
This story has been updated to better reflect how the 2018 ruling affected Blanca Sierra’s tuition, and to correct Carmen Cornejo’s date of arrival in the U.S.
