Democrats: DeVos overstepped by blocking emergency aid to undocumented college students – Politico
Sens. Michael Bennet and Bob Menendez urged DeVos in a letter Monday to reverse her restrictions.
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 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.”