U.S. citizen students face an agonizing choice: Affording college or protecting parents from deportation

“It hadn’t occurred to Ryan that going to college could endanger his parents’ safety, until he was halfway through filling out the financial aid form. He sat in his room at his computer, staring at the box he had to click acknowledging that his parents didn’t have social security numbers. It was in that moment that he understood for the first time the risk he was about to take. He worried it was too great and closed his laptop. “I don’t want to sacrifice my family for my possible success,” said the high school senior, a U.S. citizen who lives in Los Angeles and who asked that his surname be withheld to protect his family. “I felt like it was very selfish of me to put my entire family in jeopardy for the possibility of me getting into a good college.” The form Ryan was filling out last fall, known as the FAFSA, is required for anyone applying for federal financial aid, and for many low-income students it is the only possible route to affording a college degree. The Education Department is not supposed to share student information with agencies responsible for immigration enforcement. But now that the federal government has been disregarding longstanding norms on data sharing, some students with undocumented parents are not applying for federal financial aid, even though they’re eligible. Their fears that pursuing a secure economic future could lead to family members being deported, or worse, come at a time when the detention of parents of U.S. citizens has skyrocketed , according to data obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights and analyzed by ProPublica. The number of students filling out the federal aid financial student aid form has risen nationally, as a recently streamlined process has made it easier to fill out. But in some schools in immigrant communities, those numbers have declined notably. In California, for example, between 2025 and 2026 there was a decrease of nearly 3,000 students, or an 8 percent drop, in the number of high school students from mixed-status families filling out the FAFSA, even as total applications in the state increased, according to federal and state data analyzed by The Hechinger Report. “Across the country, our members are hearing directly from students who are increasingly hesitant to complete the FAFSA because they’re worried about how their families’ information could be used,” said Sean Robins, director of advocacy at the National Association of College Admissions Counseling. “That is shaping the real decisions, with students either delaying, reconsidering or even opting out all together.” He added, “What we’re seeing is that fear, and not academics or finances, is becoming a barrier to college access.” Related: Fear, arrests and know-your-rights: How one school district is grappling with ICE coming to town Most states don’t collect information on a student’s immigration status, but the numbers outside California suggest it’s not the only place where students from mixed-status families — those where a child is a U.S. citizen but a parent is not — aren’t filling out the FAFSA. In 10 schools near the Texas border where almost all of the students are Hispanic, for example, close to 500 fewer students completed a FAFSA this year, even as completed applications grew overall in the state. Some schools that serve immigrant communities in and around Chicago and Minneapolis, among other districts, have also seen drops in FAFSA completion. The FAFSA unlocks access to more than just federal grants, loans and work-study: Many states and individual colleges require students to fill it out for their own need-based aid programs. The Education Department is not supposed to share student data for any reason other than financial aid purposes, but college counselors say they felt they had to tell worried families that there is no guarantee the Trump administration will adhere to past precedent. Over the past year, the administration has attempted to use data from other federal agencies to help with its deportation efforts, including voter registration rolls , tax filings , public housing and low-income food assistance programs , although federal courts have blocked some of these attempts. “I can’t look them in the eye anymore and say federal law prohibits them using your data in other ways,” Ryan Fewins Bliss, executive director of Michigan College Access Network, said of college applicants with undocumented family members. “It also could be the pathway to getting your family detained.” The Education Department did not respond to several requests for comment. Some states, including California, New York and Washington, have separate financial aid application processes for state aid, with explicit promises not to share student data with federal agencies. But in Michigan and several other states, government officials have tied FAFSA completion to state aid and tuition-free community college. The move was seen as a way to ensure students weren’t leaving federal money they were entitled to on the table, but it now puts some students in a bind. Related: Funding cuts, shifts in aid could make college harder to afford for low-income families A counselor at a high school in southwest Michigan, who asked to remain anonymous to prevent drawing the government’s attention to her school, said parents have been too scared to show up to public events where the school informs families about the college application process. Some parents have refused to fill out their portion of the financial aid forms, making the calculation that the risk is too high and the reward too uncertain, which means their children can’t get the aid even if they qualify. Some students have been skipping school so they can work to supplement their families’ income because parents either have been deported or are scared to leave the house, the counselor said. Those absences make applying to college more challenging. This year, one of the counselor’s college-bound students decided to join the military instead. His mother was near the end of a four-year process of applying for a green card when she was issued a deportation order last fall, the counselor said, and the student enlisted because a lawyer told him military service could delay his mom’s deportation. Another college counselor in Michigan, who also requested anonymity to protect her students, said some of her college-bound seniors who are U.S. citizens disappeared earlier this year. “Students are leaving the country to be with their families because their parents are self-deporting — for them we can’t even talk about FAFSA,” she said. Ryan said he too has seen people’s parents disappear. When he weighed that prospect up against his dream of going to UCLA, it started to feel less important, less significant. His father works six days a week, getting up at 5 a.m. to take the bus to the restaurant where he works. His mom cleans houses. “Filling out that information and sending it on purpose, it made me feel bad, because it felt like all the work that my parents both put in, I could just be destroying it,” Ryan said. “If the government wanted to find out where I lived or who my family was, their status, they could find it. I gave it to them.” He explained, “I didn’t want to risk something like that, just for me — one person does not weigh the same as my mom, my dad and my grandma.” Most of the parents of his friends at school are citizens, and they couldn’t understand why in November, Ryan still hadn’t filled out the FAFSA. Only one knew about his parents’ citizenship status — Ryan didn’t feel like it was his secret to tell, and he didn’t want to put them at greater risk. He also hesitated to talk to his parents about it, not wanting to pile the pressure on them, but it was a lot for him to hold and decide on his own. Related: More first-generation students in Texas are applying to college Karla Ramos understood what Ryan was going through. Now a counselor at the nonprofit College Access Plan, she was also a U.S. citizen from a mixed-status family when she applied to college. Ryan confided in her. “Something as delicate as keeping your family together, especially when raids are happening in their community — I work with students who have to decide, and I have to tell them there’s no guarantee,” she said. Some of her students decided against filling out the FAFSA, she said. “We have students who have worked for years to be university-bound and who got into four-year colleges and are deciding to go to community college instead” because that’s what they can afford, Ramos said. “The local community college is amazing,” she added, “but this is limiting people in terms of their access to education.” Overall FAFSA completion in the state has grown by 9 percent this year, the most recent numbers show. California officials say the decline among students from mixed-status families is concerning. “It’s absolutely connected to immigration enforcement,” said Daisy Gonzales, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, which is responsible for administering college financial aid in the state. “If we’re not seeing these students in these numbers, it is very unlikely that we will see them in future years,” she added. “After you see higher education declines, you will see increased poverty, increased unemployment, which only widens our workforce gaps.” Ryan spent more than two months wrestling with the decision. UCLA was impossible for him to afford without federal aid, but the choice weighed on him, especially as immigration arrests in Los Angeles shot up last fall. Neighbors were being picked up, including those without criminal records. And some people weren’t just being deported — they were getting sick or even dying in detention facilities. He heard stories of people who had been deported to countries where they had never lived. One afternoon, his mom picked him up from his after-school job where he helped other students from low-income families apply to college, and he unloaded the pain of what he had been struggling with. He knew how scared she had been over the past several months, sometimes choosing to stay home on her days off, aware of the ICE raids throughout the city. She mostly listened during that car ride. When they got home, she sat him down and told him to apply. “This is what I want for your future. I want you to succeed, even if it costs me something. I want you to do the best you can,” Ryan recalled her saying. “The risk is worth the future you could have.” A few days later, Ryan submitted the FAFSA. In March, when college admission decisions came out, he waited for his parents to get home — he’d promised they would all be together when he opened the letter. He was one of nearly 147,000 who applied to UCLA and was braced for a rejection, but when he opened the letter on his computer, it said, “Congratulations.” “It took me a little bit to realize what actually happened, and before then, my parents were already screaming,” Ryan said. He is applying for scholarships and has saved money from lifeguarding the last several summers. He also plans to work while in school and will get state aid for low-income families. But given the total cost of around $45,000 per year, it’s his decision to fill out the FAFSA and get access to the same aid as other U.S. citizens that will allow him to afford to go to UCLA. Just before he was accepted, the father of a family friend got picked up by ICE. Ryan sometimes worries about leaving for college, feeling if he stays home he could somehow protect his parents. But they want him to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor, or maybe a conservationist, and for now, that’s the plan. Contact senior investigative reporter Meredith Kolodner at kolodner@hechingerreport.org or on Signal: @merkolodner.04. This story about fears of filling out the FAFSA form was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter . The post U.S. citizen students face an agonizing choice: Affording college or protecting parents from deportation appeared first on The Hechinger Report .

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