The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the University of Miami’s U Dreamers Program for allegedly breaching civil rights laws by providing specific scholarships to students without permanent legal status.
UM’s website states that the U Dreamers Program is “available to academically talented and admissible Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and undocumented high school seniors and transfer students.”
According to the DOE website, providing scholarships specifically to “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who came into the U.S. as children, is a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits against discrimination on the basis of national origin.
The DOE is investigating claims that the U Dreamers Program provides “unlawful exclusionary funding based on national origin.” The DOE’s investigation will determine if UM is “granting scholarships only for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or ‘undocumented’ students.”
This investigation began due to complaints from the Equal Protection Project. EPP is “devoted to fair treatment of all persons without regard to race or ethnicity,” according to its website. The EPP is associated with the Legal Insurrection Foundation,which is “widely recognized as one of the leading conservative law and politics websites.”
UM is one of five schools under investigation. The four other schools are the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.
Through this program, UM commits to meeting “100% of demonstrated financial need for admitted students,” including tuition, fees, housing, food and other expenses.
First-year and transfer DACA and other undocumented applicants are required to provide their country of birth and number of years they have lived in the U.S., but they must “attest that they will not require a student visa for university study in the U.S.”
The “terms and conditions” section of the U Dreamers Program page also outlines that if a student in the U Dreamers Program has a citizenship change that enables them to qualify for federal student aid, the funding from the program will be taken away.
The Miami Hurricane requested a comment from the University after business hours on the evening of July 24. We will update the story as soon as we receive a comment.
This is a developing story.
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