Fox News attacked immigrant students who are set to become eligible for in-state college tuition in Virginia under existing state law, and misleadingly attacked the decision as providing an “illegal education.” 

On April 29, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring announced that the state's existing law defining residents eligible for in-state tuition does not exclude students approved under the U.S. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Virginia can now join 17 other states in providing in-state tuition rates for previously undocumented students at the commonwealth's public colleges and universities who are now lawfully present under DACA.  During the April 30 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Heather Nauert claimed the Virginia decision was due to “the Dream Act, which was created by the Obama administration,” and falsely disparaged the students as “illegals”:

On Fox & Friends First, an on-screen graphic labeled the decision “illegal education”:                                                                                           

Fox's misleading report on this law confused the Dream Act, a bill that would provide an eventual path to permanent residency and citizenship to eligible undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, with DACA, an executive action signed by President Obama which allows some of those children to apply for legal living and working status on a temporary basis. As Fox's sister organization, Fox News Latino, explained, it is DACA, not the Dream Act, which led to the judgment of Virginia's attorney general that these students are legally eligible to receive the tuition:

In 2012, Obama created a special immigration status, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), for immigrants between the ages of 15 and 32 who came to the U.S. before they turned 16. That status allows them to remain if they have graduated from high school or are enrolled as students and meet other conditions.

Herring said the new category amounts to lawful immigration status for those who hold it, and he is therefore empowered to implement the change. Herring's office estimated that 8,100 Virginia residents have obtained lawful status under the 2012 program and are now eligible for in-state tuition.

Fox's own Chris Wallace noted the popularity of providing more affordable tuition to undocumented students last month when he favorably highlighted a privately run program that provides aid to these students. Wallace praised the program as “a program supported by everyone from Grover Norquist to Mark Zuckerberg.”