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Immigration advocates in Florida have decried a “cruel and harmful” new rule by education officials aligned to hard-right Republican governor Ron DeSantis to ban undocumented students from state colleges and universities.

The Florida board of education voted on Tuesday to bar access to its 28 state-funded institutions to anybody not a US citizen or “lawfully present” in the country. It follows Florida’s move last year to strip discounted in-state tuition rates for certain immigrant students.

Opponents on Wednesday assailed the new directive, which some analysts estimate could cost Florida up to $15m annually in lost tuition and other fees. They also questioned if it was legal, given that it was approved by DeSantis’s hand-picked board of seven, instead of the elected state legislature.

“The rule-making process is supposed to implement existing legislation and laws that were passed, not create its own, and not create its own policies, which is exactly what the department is trying to do,” said Alexis Tsoukalas, senior analyst of the Florida Policy Institute, at a press conference hosted by the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

She said the action ran contrary to DeSantis’s own “Sail to 60” goal, a 2019 policy that sought to lift the number of Florida residents with “high-value” post-secondary education from below 50% to at least 60%.

“The Florida college system is already struggling with declining enrollment, this has been the case for the past several years, and it’s only gotten worse,” she said.

“It’s not like there are students waiting in the wings to enroll when others are denied admission. Florida cannot reach its attainment goal if a shrinking share are enrolling, so it is very much a concern for the state.”

Alexander Vallejos, a so-called Dreamer and computer science student at the University of Central Florida, who came with his family from South America in 2001 as a one-year-old, said it was cruel to dash the hopes of immigrant children who worked though the school system to graduate high school, only to find their pathway to higher education blocked.

“This ruling sends a painful message to young people who have done everything right,” he said. “It tells them that their hard work isn’t enough, and that their dreams are less because of something they have no control over.

“Behind every policy is a real person, a student’s story, where they’re staying up late to study, a young person working two jobs to pay just to pay for college, a future engineer, teacher, nurse, entrepreneur. They just want the chance to succeed.”

Luisa Santos, an elected member of the Miami-Dade school, who was brought to the US by her family from Columbia as an eight-year-old, said the state faced “serious consequences” for moving ahead with the ban.

“[It’s] everything from the $15m in lost tuition and fees estimated as a result of this, and even our governor getting in his own way of stated goals like Sail to 60, which so many school districts around Florida have worked so hard to try to accomplish,” she said.

“What I really want to focus on is how cruel, harmful, and just unnecessary this rule is right now. These rule changes took me back to the darkest days of high school, where, like Alexander, I felt the world caving in on me.

“No matter how hard I worked, I felt like opportunities were being taken away.”

Republican state senator Don Gaetz told the Florida Phoenix that only citizens and documented immigrants should be allowed to attend the state’s colleges and universities.

“The policy issue is: should illegal aliens receive taxpayer-funded higher education in Florida? And in my view, the answer to that question should be no,” he said.

“And if necessary, I will file legislation to ensure that the decision of the state board is enshrined in statute.”

But Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state representative running to become Orlando mayor, spoke by telephone during the public comment section of Tuesday’s board of education meeting to denounce the policy, according to the outlet.

“The attempt to restrict a child’s access to higher education based on the documentation status that is no fault of their own is un-American, it’s unfaithful, and it’s absolutely also constitutionally concerning because, obviously, we did not pass legislation on this matter,” she said.