Hacking The Sun

Solar geoengineering... with few rules

By Julia Simon | NPR

Published April 21, 2024 12:01 PM

Andrew Song and Luke Iseman of Make Sunsets ready for a launch. Iseman says they hope to someday cool the earth on a larger scale.

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Julia Simon

NPR

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Topline:

In the past year, the conversation around solar geoengineering as a climate solution has become more serious, says David Keith, geophysics professor and head of a new University of Chicago initiative to study a broad array of climate geoengineering ideas.

What is solar geoengineering? The aim is to harness the sun's power to fight climate change by shooting vast amounts of reflective particles high into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight off Earth.

The issue: But as money flows in – some from investors who hope to profit from this technology – regulations around outdoor experiments and possible broader deployments aren't keeping up, experts say.

Because of the way the stratosphere works, a large-scale release of particles in one part of the world could impact a large part of the planet. Questions persist about possible risks of solar geoengineering for everything from global crops to droughts. And there are risks of unintended consequences that scientists and investors haven't yet imagined – the unknown unknowns of trying to engineer a cooler Earth.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — One morning late last year, an RV pulled into a parking lot on the outskirts of Silicon Valley. Inside it was a blue Ikea bag with huge balloons, and metal tanks full of helium and sulfur dioxide gas.

The mission was led by Luke Iseman, a 41-year-old serial entrepreneur with a mohawk hairstyle and an orange t-shirt that read "Cool Earth." Inspired by a science fiction novel, Iseman had founded a company in 2022 called Make Sunsets. In the novel, a billionaire undertakes a type of "solar geoengineering": shooting vast amounts of reflective particles high into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight off Earth and counter global warming. Now, Iseman was trying to do it in the real world.

Iseman took a wrench and opened the tanks, releasing the sulfur dioxide first and then the helium. He siphoned the gasses into a long tube while his business partner, Andrew Song, stood just outside the RV using the tube to inflate a weather balloon. As the balloon grew to about 6 feet wide, some sulfur dioxide – which can be hazardous to human health in high concentrations – started to leak. I began to cough, and my eyes watered.

"Don't take big whiffs of air," Song said.

"Just don't breathe," Iseman said with a laugh.

A man with light-tone skin weats sunglasses and an orange T-shirt that reads: Cool Earth. Behind him an Asian man in a puffer jacket and cap holds onto a partially inflated balloon resting on the ground. They're next to a camper.

The three balloons that Make Sunsets launched that day made it to the stratosphere – a layer of the atmosphere about six to 30 miles above Earth's surface. When the balloons popped, the sulfur dioxide gas turned to particles– reflecting enough sunlight, the company says, to offset the warming of 175 gas-powered cars for a year. But Make Sunsets and its balloons signal something bigger: a growing number of startups, research projects, and billionaire-backed nonprofits hoping to ready this tech to potentially cool the earth on a wider scale.

In the past year, the conversation around solar geoengineering as a climate solution has become more serious, says David Keith, geophysics professor and head of a new University of Chicago initiative to study a broad array of climate geoengineering ideas. "Suddenly we're getting conversations with senior political leaders and senior people in the environmental world who are starting to think about this and engage with it seriously in a way that just wasn't happening five years ago," Keith says.

But as money flows in – some from investors who hope to profit from this technology – regulations around outdoor experiments and possible broader deployments aren't keeping up, experts say. Because of the way the stratosphere works, a large-scale release of particles in one part of the world could impact a large part of the planet. Questions persist about possible risks of solar geoengineering for everything from global crops to droughts. And there are risks of unintended consequences that scientists and investors haven't yet imagined – the unknown unknowns of trying to engineer a cooler Earth.

Shuchi Talati, founder and executive director of the nonprofit The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, says Make Sunsets' actions crystallize the need for urgent regulation of this tech.

"At some point down the road, they're going to do this at a big enough scale to trigger some sort of climate impact," Talati says. "It can be done in an effective, globally governed way, or it can be done by two crazy people in California, and it can look horrible for a lot of people."

Song holds a balloon while Iseman watches from the RV. "I think regulations have to be holistic to be meaningful, or people, including me, will just game them," Iseman says.

"The allure of the techno fix"

Iseman, a former director at a tech incubator who used to build large art projects at Burning Man festival, acknowledges there's a performative aspect to his work. For his company to have a measurable cooling impact, researchers say it would need to release significantly more material, probably require equipping special planes, and is likely years away.

But Make Sunsets is attracting significant Silicon Valley investment, and is hoping to have that bigger impact. The company has raised more than $1.2 million from venture capital firms like Boost VC, Pioneer Fund, and Draper Associates.

It's unclear how many entities are exploring solar geoengineering, because some projects keep their work under wraps. But Make Sunsets isn't alone.

A U.S.-Israeli startup called Stardust Solutions that plans to someday launch reflective particles into the stratosphere has raised $15 million, according to its chief executive officer and co-founder, Yanai Yedvab. Stardust's investors include SolarEdge, an Israeli green energy company, and Awz Ventures, an Israeli-Canadian venture capital fund that highlights on its website a partnership with Israel's Ministry of Defense.

From sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky to giant sun-reflecting space mirrors, geoengineering the planet to avoid the worst impacts of global warming is capturing the imagination of greater numbers of people. Coming out of the hottest year on record, with governments and industries failing to adequately transition away from fossil fuels, some people are looking for silver bullets. This attraction is especially felt in Silicon Valley, says Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.

"Climate tech is sexy," Wagner says, "because it's the allure of the techno fix. Look to D.C., and things are messy. Politics is messy. Wouldn't it be nice if we could cut through all of this with the ultimate techno fix that will solve this thing once and for all?"

Iseman says he's motivated by an urgency to act on climate change. World governments agreed to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. But temperatures have already risen about 1.2 degrees Celsius, and many scientists think the world will blow past 1.5 Celsius. Passing it would mean more catastrophic impacts like lethal heat waves and flooding, coral die-offs and melting ice.

"What we have done has not worked," Iseman says about current efforts to address global warming. "And we need to try many more broad approaches."

Iseman and other solar geoengineering advocates reject the idea of a so-called "moral hazard" with this technology. That's the idea that solar geoengineering will distract from the difficult - and scientifically necessary - work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and will give fossil fuel polluters continued license to pollute.

"I think we need to do solar geoengineering – hard stop – because the world is too hot. We need to cool it off," Iseman says. "I wouldn't say we should only do that after we start dropping global greenhouse [gas] emissions. 'Cause, frankly, I don't know when we're gonna do that."

Make Sunsets does not employ any scientists. The employees are just Iseman and Song, who met while Iseman worked at a tech incubator and Song worked as an outreach manager at a crowdfunding website. Iseman says if they scale up the company, they'll hire scientists.

Stardust's team includes 20 scientists and engineers, including chemists, aviation experts, and physicists, like the company's CEO, Yedvab. Yedvab wrote in an email that he started looking into the tech two and a half years ago and found that it "is the sole viable option humanity has to stop global warming in the coming decades."

Stardust notes their focus is research in anticipation of future government contracts for deployment.

But there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the science, and experts worry it's too dangerous for companies to have a financial motive to develop and deploy this tech on a larger scale, when there still isn't clear regulation.

"We do know it will reduce global temperatures. That is the one thing we know," Talati says. "We don't know almost everything else."

A man with light-tone skin works on a laptop computer at an RV dining table.

From droughts to "termination shock," the technology poses risks

The type of solar geoengineering Make Sunsets works on is often called "stratospheric aerosol injection," and much of what's known about how it could work comes from volcanoes. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, sulfur dioxide from the eruption spread across the global stratosphere. The particles ended up cooling the world about half a degree Celsius the following year.

Scientists predict the world would, on average, get cooler with this type of solar geoengineering. Compared to other climate tech, it's also very cheap, and – once operational – could have a rapid cooling impact.

But there are lots of unpredictable risks. Computer modeling has limits, says Jonas Jägermeyr, who models impacts of solar geoengineering on global crops at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "It is difficult to know what we are getting ourselves into unless we actually did the experiment on the whole planet," he wrote in an email.

If the world engages in stratospheric aerosol injection, it wouldn't go back to some pre-global warming climate, says Alan Robock, climate scientist at Rutgers University. This type of solar geoengineering could weaken the summer monsoon, meaning some regions – where billions of people live – would see less rain. And it could end up changing the ozone layer and ultraviolet radiation, which could affect crop growth and global food supplies, Jägermeyr says.

Changing temperatures and rainfall patterns could mean new risks for infectious diseases, says Christopher Trisos, chief research officer in the Climate Risk Lab at the University of Cape Town. "Solar geoengineering could shift the population at risk by nearly a billion people for malaria across developing countries," Trisos says.

Then there's "termination shock," which is what it sounds like: the shock of suddenly halting a huge experiment. After injecting particles into the stratosphere, the particles only stay there for a year or two and then fall back to earth. Depending on the material, those falling particles can sometimes create their own environmental and health risks.

Because the particles don't stay up forever, if the world doesn't simultaneously reduce the amount of planet-heating gasses in the atmosphere while doing large-scale solar geoengineering, suddenly stopping the experiment poses a big risk.

"You get a whole rush of global warming and climate change in a very short period of time," Trisos says. "That would be very dangerous for ecosystems, for biodiversity, in many cases, very dangerous for crops and food supplies as well."

A woman with medium-ton skin is photographed in front of a porch railing. She wears a jacket and scarf.

New companies raise fears of regulatory gaps

A growing number of legal scholars say national and international regulations are inadequate to cover potential large-scale deployments of solar geoengineering. As global warming gets worse, "there's going to be a strong desire by someone somewhere to do something," says Tracy Hester, a law professor at University of Houston who studies climate geoengineering. "There will be a temptation to grab the throttle and push ahead."

Hester worries that right now there's no regulatory strategy if that happens: "We need to know what we're doing. The consequences here are pretty massive."

In the U.S., the interactions Make Sunsets has with U.S. government agencies are minimal. Before each balloon launch, Iseman calls up the Federal Aviation Administration and alerts them that he'll be launching weather balloons. Iseman also files a yearly report with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) listing all of the company's "weather modification activities". In one NOAA report in the box marked "project or activity designation," Iseman wrote: "Cooling Earth."

While Make Sunsets was launching balloons in the parking lot, on the edge of a county park, a park ranger drove up to us, got out of the car, asked Iseman and Song a few questions about the balloons, and drove away after less than three minutes.

Iseman spends much of his time in Baja California, and the company has done a number of experiments in Mexico. Last year the Mexican government released a statement saying that they would ban solar geoengineering in their national territory, referencing the activities of Make Sunsets.

But outside of Mexico, things are unclear. There are no international conventions that specifically deal with this type of technology, Hester says. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity – a treaty that protects wildlife – has a moratorium on geoengineering that affects living species. But the moratorium is guidance, and non-binding. And "the U.S. is actually not a party" to the treaty, says Daniel Bodansky, a climate legal expert and law professor at Arizona State University.

The Montreal Protocol, a treaty to address ozone depletion, could potentially cover the ways that stratospheric aerosol injection affects ozone. But that treaty does not currently address all the impacts of the tech, nor does it cover all types of solar geoengineering, Bodansky says.

A large round white balloon rises against a blue sky with something red hanging from it.

Last month Hester, Talati and others filed a petition to NOAA. They asked the federal agency to consider making a rule requiring solar geoengineering companies like Make Sunsets to file more information about what they're doing, and consider regulating American citizens when they do solar geoengineering internationally.

A NOAA spokesperson wrote in an email, "We are currently reviewing the request for rulemaking and will provide a response to the petitioners."

Stardust is doing outdoor small-scale testing "only to the extent required ... and in full compliance with all relevant regulations," Yedvab wrote.

Yedvab, who used to work for Israel's atomic energy commission, adds: "Decision making regarding whether to deploy [stratospheric aerosol injection], when and to what extent should only be taken by governments."

A White House official wrote in an email that solar geoengineering activities in the U.S. must comply with applicable local, state, and federal laws. The email notes that new tech "may present unforeseen circumstances that require new guidance and/or governance mechanisms."

The official did not clarify what that new guidance or governance might look like.

Iseman of Make Sunsets says, "I think regulations have to be holistic to be meaningful, or people, including me, will just game them."

An aircraft carrier sits in the water tethered to a dock

A test on San Francisco Bay

As the private sector grows, not-for-profit entities are speeding up their research.

Earlier this month, a handful of scientists and engineers gathered on deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier on the San Francisco Bay to test a large machine. After about a decade of work, the researchers were readying the machine for one of its first tests outdoors, creating tiny salt water particles that could – someday – reflect sunlight and cool earth.

An engineer scooped salt into a large plastic container, mixing it with water. Then he turned the machine on, letting forth a giant hissing spray of salt water particles down the aircraft runway.

The test represents a different type of solar geoengineering than Make Sunsets' balloons. "Marine cloud brightening" involves brightening ocean clouds to reflect more planet-heating sunlight.

This technology could someday significantly reduce many of the impacts of global warming, says Sarah Doherty, a University of Washington professor who manages this program. But it also has risks. If the particles are too big, they can make the clouds less reflective, and actually warm the planet. An imbalance of cloud brightening off West Africa could cause a drought in the Amazon. For Doherty, these unknowns are a big reason for this research.

"You could see in 20 years from now, people saying, 'Oh my God, we're really in trouble. We've got major climate disruption. Let's do this thing that we know exists.' Well, if we haven't done the research to look at the ways to not do it properly, to not do it in a way that's going to cause more damage, then we're really in trouble," she says.

Four people stand on a raised surface next to water.

The risks are why university researchers, not for-profit companies, should guide studies of this tech, argues Kelly Wanser, executive director of SilverLining, the nonprofit that led fundraising for Doherty's program. The University of Washington program – which also aims to improve current climate modeling – has raised $16 million, mostly from philanthropic climate funds and Silicon Valley scientists. Doherty says there's no strings attached. "They're not gonna ever get anything back out of it other than more science," she says.

Wanser contrasts this with what she calls the "misaligned incentives" of private companies entering the space. In addition to its venture capital fundraising, Make Sunsets sells "cooling credits" – a single $10 credit offsets the warming of 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide, the company says. For Wanser, for-profit companies like Make Sunsets have a monetary incentive to keep releasing balloons, even if the effects could be harmful.

Iseman responds in an email that, "All change is scary, and we can't use 'someday maybe' as an excuse to avoid the bold actions that the climate crisis demands."

But even with university-based solar geoengineering research, there's a need for regulation, says Imran Khalid, a climate policy researcher based in Islamabad. While the aircraft carrier is a museum open to the public – a group of elementary school children came aboard a little while after the test – there are no rules requiring future research projects to be so transparent. And while this study released a small amount of particles, there are no specific regulations to limit a future study from making a larger release.

Given the stakes, Khalid says there should be global input into research frameworks. "Research leads to deployment at some time," he says. "There needs to be a global discussion around this issue."

A U.S. flag waves next to a machine expelling material into the air. The sky is cloudy.

"I have an obligation to do what I can"

Right now, most solar geoengineering research is funded and carried out by people in the Global North, in places like Silicon Valley. That worries Khalid.

"When we're talking about solar geoengineering, it's important to contextualize it from this perspective," he says, "of somebody who's sitting here in Pakistan, who's recently seen the 2022 floods."

Those floods, which scientists found were made worse because of global warming, left almost a third of the country underwater at their peak, and left hundreds of thousands of displaced people in camps. Just as global warming's impacts are often felt more in developing countries, some scientists fear developing countries could also be particularly vulnerable to solar geoengineering's risks.

"You can get some strong kinds of winners and losers," Trisos says. "And that's especially concerning because a lot of these developing countries in the tropics, such as in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America, right now don't have a strong voice in the solar geoengineering conversation."

Some nonprofits are trying to change that. In the past year The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering has started consultations and workshops in South Africa, India and Pakistan to educate local scientists and civil society groups about solar geoengineering. The U.K.-based Degrees Initiative has awarded $900,000 to scientists from Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and other countries to study solar geoengineering.

During the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi this past February, Switzerland put forth a proposal for more global research on solar geoengineering. While it didn't pass, Talati, who was at the talks, says they left her encouraged. "That was a glimmer of hope for me," she says. "To see so many new countries offering their comments and wanting to engage in this conversation."

From his vantage point on a Zoom call in Silicon Valley, Iseman says it's unfair that he has privileges to act on solar geoengineering while others don't. "I think that it is unfair that I was born as a lower middle class, white-ish American male," he says.

But he says that isn't stopping him from scaling his company: "I have an obligation to do what I can to cool the planet, as does anyone else who actually reads the science."

"We're two guys playing with balloons," Iseman says. "In an ideal world, this shouldn't be something left to dudes with a startup to be doing. But that's the world we're in, for now."

Two people stand near a silver camper van. One holds a deflated balloon.

Health

Health care in California

Federal changes may cause drastic drop in coverage

Aaron Schrank has been on the ground, reporting on homelessness and other issues in L.A. for more than a decade.

Published May 4, 2026 4:58 PM

A doctor in a collared shirt and tie, but no coat, holds s a woman's hands. An examining table is behind them.

County officials estimate that recent Medi-Cal changes could put coverage at risk for hundreds of thousands of residents.

(

Maya Sugarman

LAist

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Topline:

The number of Californians without health insurance could double from 2 million today to 4 million by 2030, according to a report from the Legislative Analyst's Office. It’s the state budget office’s preliminary attempt to quantify how federal legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will reshape healthcare access statewide.

Losing coverage: The One Big Beautiful Bill is driving nearly 90% of the projected coverage loss, according to the LAO report. It's mostly Medi-Cal enrollees who are expected to be dropped when new work requirements take effect in 2027. The remaining 10% are largely people leaving the state's health insurance marketplace, Covered California, after enhanced federal premium subsidies expired last year.

L.A. County impact: County officials estimate that recent Medi-Cal changes could put coverage at risk for hundreds of thousands of residents and cost the county’s health departments about $800 million a year. A U.C. Berkeley Labor Center analysis projected more than 1 million Medi-Cal enrollees could lose coverage by 2028.

Why it matters: More uninsured people means hospitals and clinics provide more services without getting paid. The LAO projects that uncompensated care costs at hospitals could grow by several billion dollars statewide by 2030. Clinics face steeper losses because they run on smaller budgets and depend more heavily on Medi-Cal revenue. The LAO also projects premiums on the individual health insurance market will rise as healthier people drop coverage.

What's being proposed: The LAO itself doesn’t recommend new spending and instead urges lawmakers to track what happens to hospitals, clinics and county programs before taking action. But both L.A. County and state officials are pushing tax efforts to combat federal cuts. LA County voters will decide June 2 on Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax that would generate about $1 billion a year for hospitals and clinics. A November statewide ballot initiative would impose a one-time 5% tax on Californians worth over $1 billion and direct 90% of proceeds to Medi-Cal.

The number of Californians without health insurance could double from 2 million today to 4 million by 2030, according to a report from the state Legislative Analyst's Office. It’s the state budget office’s preliminary attempt to quantify how federal legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will reshape healthcare access statewide.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is driving nearly 90% of the projected coverage loss, according to the LAO report. It's mostly Medi-Cal enrollees who are expected to be dropped when new work requirements take effect in 2027. The remaining 10% are largely people leaving the state's health insurance marketplace, Covered California, after enhanced federal premium subsidies expired last year.

What's the impact to coverage?

L.A. County officials estimate that recent Medi-Cal changes could put coverage at risk for hundreds of thousands of residents and cost the health departments about $800 million a year. A UC Berkeley Labor Center analysis projected more than 1 million Medi-Cal enrollees could lose coverage by 2028.

The LAO report also warns that county indigent health programs for uninsured residents will soon face a surge in demand they’re not prepared to meet. Those county programs had enrolled about 850,000 people statewide before the federal government expanded Medicaid coverage in 2014. Total enrollment is currently 10,000 statewide, but the trend is going to reverse, according to the report.

What's the impact to health-care providers?

More uninsured people means hospitals and clinics provide more services without getting paid. The LAO projects that uncompensated care costs at hospitals could grow by several billion dollars statewide by 2030. Clinics face steeper losses because they run on smaller budgets and depend more heavily on Medi-Cal revenue.

The LAO also projects premiums on the individual health insurance market will rise as healthier people drop coverage.

What are proposals to help?

The LAO itself doesn’t recommend new spending and instead urges lawmakers to track what happens to hospitals, clinics and county programs before taking action. But both L.A. County and state officials are pushing tax efforts to combat federal cuts.

L.A. County voters will decide June 2 on Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax that would generate about $1 billion a year for hospitals and clinics. A November statewide ballot initiative would impose a one-time 5% tax on Californians worth over $1 billion and direct 90% of proceeds to Medi-Cal.

Fan Zones across L.A. County:

The Original Farmers Market in L.A., June 18-21
The City of Downey, June 20
LA Union Station, June 25-28
Hansen Dam Lake, July 2-5
"Magic" Johnson Park, July 4-5
Whittier Narrows, July 9-11
Venice Beach, July 11
The Fairplex, July 14-15, July 18-19
West Harbor, July 14-15, July 18-19
Downtown Burbank, July 18-19

Ticket prices range from free (City of Downey, Union Station L.A., “Magic” Johnson Park, Whittier Narrows) to over $300 for a VIP experience with a viewing lounge and a concert at the downtown Burbank Fan Zone on the day of the World Cup final match on July 19.

Fan Zone kick off

At the first Fan Zone, at The Original Farmers Market from June 18 for four days, entry will cost you $5 per day or $17 for all four days. Kids age 3 and under are free. (FIFA says the zones are family friendly).

You’ll be able to see four matches there each of the four days, including Mexico vs. South Korea on June 18 at 6 p.m. and USA vs. Australia on June 19 at noon.

Multi-colored scarves are displayed with the worlds "FIFA LOS ANGELES" printed on them. A sign with a pointed finger reads "METRO".

You won’t have to squint to find your favorite player or catch the goals. The Farmer’s Market will include a 30-foot viewing screen as well as a 15-foot secondary screen to watch the games. There will be beer gardens, and you can purchase food from the Market's dozens of establishments.

Other Fan Zones

The West Harbor L.A. Fan Zone will give people an opportunity to experience the newest major development along the San Pedro waterfront, a 42-acre waterfront district that’s been years in the making.

The Union Station L.A. Fan Zone on June 25 is free and includes match viewing, music, food, and immersive fan experiences, featuring live DJs.

The final Fan Zone opens July 18 and 19 in downtown Burbank for the World Cup’s last two matches. FIFA says it’ll include “an adjacent international street fair filled with global flavors and cultural experiences.” Tickets range from $25 to over $300

The full list of the Fan Zones is here.

This of course, isn’t the only opportunity to watch World Cup matches with groups of people in SoCal. The city of L.A. will host its own watch parties.

Education

Student asylum seekers

Education can be costly and court cases linger

By Andrea Baltodano, Chrissa Olson | CalMatters

Published May 4, 2026 2:00 PM

Students of various skin tones walk on campus grounds during the day.

Many college campuses either don’t track their populations of rural students.

(

Larry Gordon

EdSource

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Topline:

Up against a massive court backlog that can drag their cases for years, asylum seekers face steep costs when pursuing their dreams of college in California.

Facing a double blow: Asylum-seeking students in California often face a double blow: they are charged higher tuition for nonresidents and excluded from most financial aid. For students and their families, this can mean thousands of dollars paid out of pocket and years of financial stress as their immigration cases remain unresolved. Before establishing residency, asylum-seeking students are charged non-resident rates, which are about three times what state residents pay for public universities and roughly eight to 13 times more for community colleges, depending on the district.

Policy changes stoke uncertainty: As of February 2026, a little over 2.3 million immigrants are awaiting asylum hearings nationwide, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal activity. The most recent data shows California alone had about 169,000 pending asylum cases in its immigration courts by the end of 2023 — the second-largest backlog of any state. The average wait for an asylum hearing in California was 1,412 days at that time. The Trump administration paused asylum cases in November, creating even further delays. The administration has now allowed cases to resume for applicants from all but 40 countries.

Up against a massive court backlog that can drag their cases for years, asylum seekers face steep costs when pursuing their dreams of college in California.

Asylum-seeking students in California often face a double blow: they are charged higher tuition for nonresidents and excluded from most financial aid. For students and their families, this can mean thousands of dollars paid out of pocket and years of financial stress as their immigration cases remain unresolved.

Before establishing residency, asylum-seeking students are charged non-resident rates, which are about three times what state residents pay for public universities and roughly eight to 13 times more for community colleges, depending on the district.

All asylum seekers are disqualified from federal financial aid. The few who qualify for California’s state aid may never know their options, or face hurdles in obtaining it due to a patchwork of financial aid processes.

The state’s higher education systems are not mandated to track asylum seekers, making state budget impacts nearly unquantifiable during legislative attempts to expand financial aid eligibility.

“I only see them struggling,” said Eric Cline, social services program director at OASIS Legal Services, which supports LGBTQ+ asylum seekers across the Bay Area and Central Valley. “I’m always surprised (when) a few clients tell me 'I just graduated from college.’ I think, ‘Wow, how did that happen?’”

Policy changes stoke uncertainty for asylum seekers

Asylum seeking is one of the least-protected immigration statuses in the U.S. Asylum seekers, who’ve fled their home countries fearing persecution and are asking the U.S. for protection, differ from refugees, whose status is granted before they enter the country. Asylum seekers apply upon arriving in the U.S.

Applicants can stay as their cases remain pending for years, though experts say the Trump administration is expediting deportations for numerous asylum seekers and ending cases before they can receive a full hearing.

As of February 2026, a little over 2.3 million immigrants are awaiting asylum hearings nationwide, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal activity. The most recent data shows California alone had about 169,000 pending asylum cases in its immigration courts by the end of 2023 — the second-largest backlog of any state. The average wait for an asylum hearing in California was 1,412 days at that time.

The Trump administration paused asylum cases in November, creating even further delays. The administration has now allowed cases to resume for applicants from all but 40 countries. In the San Francisco immigration court system, which is popular among asylum seekers due to higher acceptance rates, a combination of firings by the Trump administration, retirements and relocations whittled the 21 immigration judges to two, according to reporting in Mission Local. Left behind is a caseload of nearly 119,000 immigration cases, the highest of any immigration court in California.

President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” also established new fees for asylum seekers, placing additional pressure on an already low-income population. Applicants must now pay an initial $100 application fee plus $100 per year while their case is pending, $550 for a work permit, and $745 each year to renew the permit. In addition, a new rule proposed by the Department of Homeland Security would effectively end the ability of asylum seekers to obtain work permits at all.

People walk in a large plaza in front of a large brick collegiate building. Lawns flank the plaza, which is partially shaded by a tree.

As they await a decision, asylum seekers are excluded from federal aid and some state financial aid programs, including Cal Grants under California law.

For one asylum seeker, Carol, being ineligible for financial aid meant she had to take time off from school to work to make ends meet. CalMatters is not using her full name because she fears speaking publicly may jeopardize her asylum case.

Carol did speak before the Assembly Higher Education Committee in 2023 urging lawmakers to pass AB 888, which would have expanded Cal Grant eligibility to certain asylum seekers. The bill ultimately did not pass.

She said she arrived in the United States at 17 and had spent more than six years waiting for her case to move through immigration courts, a period during which she said she was ineligible for financial aid.

“I’ve had to delay my educational journey several times, including going part-time and even taking a semester off from school to work,” Carol told lawmakers.

Without access to aid, she said she experienced homelessness, couch surfing and at one point slept on a mattress topper on a hardwood floor because she could not afford a bed. She worked multiple jobs at a time, skipped meals and attended class without the required course materials.

Her story, she said, was not new. Carol told the committee that four years earlier her brother had testified with a nearly identical experience on behalf of a previous bill that was ultimately vetoed, a cycle she argued could have been prevented.

“Had California taken action then, I wouldn’t have had to face the harrowing experiences that I shared with you today,” she said.

Despite the barriers, Carol graduated from Cal State Long Beach and worked as a caseworker with the International Rescue Committee, helping resettle refugees and asylum seekers. She told lawmakers she hopes to pursue a law degree and become an international human rights attorney.

The narrow path to college aid for asylum-seeking students

Many asylum seekers arrive eager to continue studies they began abroad, but quickly run into what Cline calls “a brick wall."

“All of our clients are low-income … they’re almost never eligible for generalized financial aid,” he said. “When you take away the financial aid aspect, it makes (college) pretty inaccessible.”

For California residents, annual undergraduate tuition is $15,588 at the University of California, $6,838 at the California State University and about $1,380 for 30 units at a community college. Students classified as non-residents — including some asylum seekers before establishing residency — can pay $54,858 at a University of California, about $20,968 at a Cal State before campus-based fees, and roughly $10,140 to $13,560 for 30 units at a community college, depending on the district. These figures do not include campus-based fees, housing or living expenses.

Even when students do manage to establish residency, the cost is still steep. For the many asylum seekers who arrive in the United States as adults, they may not have attended a California school previously, barring them from qualifying for state financial aid.

AB 540, the 2001 law that exempts undocumented students from paying non-resident tuition, only applies if the student attended a California high school or community college for three years.

Those who qualify through AB 540 can fill out the California Dream Act Application for state financial aid, such as Cal Grants, university system-specific grants, state loans, and the state’s middle class scholarship.

The application process can still be confusing for asylum seekers whose status is not fully accounted for in the design of the application. For example, asylum seekers often have Social Security numbers for work authorization, but affirming so while answering the financial aid pre-screening questions leads to undetermined eligibility because the questions don’t take into account the nuances of applying as an asylum seeker.

Colorful stickers and small pins lay on a table.

Asylum seekers often require extra help from financial aid counselors, but even counselors may not know how to help navigate eligibility rules. Students often wind up seeking help from undocumented student resource centers on public campuses, which are designed to help students who lack legal residency and those from mixed-status families find aid and academic support.

Kaveena Singh, the director of immigration legal services at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, which provides legal services to low-income immigrants, noted that she herself has written letters to financial aid offices to help explain the in-between nature of the few asylum-seeking students she has served.

As an asylum-seeking student in his mid-20s, L. ended up qualifying for state financial aid through AB 540. However, he misunderstood for six years exactly what aid he qualified for. L. wished to withhold his name and the names of the institutions he’s attended for fear of negative impacts on his pending asylum case.

Initially, community college didn’t cost him anything — but when he transferred to a large four-year university, the cost of college soared. He went to his university's financial aid office for help so often that all the staff there knew his name. It was a "big relief” when he was finally able to successfully fill out the California Dream Act Application, and obtain financial aid for his summer and fall quarters.

L.'s asylum case has been pending for nine years. He, his dad, mom and younger brother arrived in the United States in the winter of 2016, claiming asylum under fear of political retribution. His father organized political assemblies in China, and his mother was forced to have an abortion under the one-child policy.

“I just wish I could go home and visit family and friends and catch up for a good few weeks in the summer here and there to reconnect with my past,” L. said. “It's like there's two separate lives, like two entities being artificially cut.”

L. worked throughout high school and college, and worried about affording school.

Most days, the combination of family trauma and the limbo of waiting for his case means L. survives through “constant compartmentalization.”

In the meantime, he tries to carry on — he studies politics, and is interested in international relations and human rights.

"As rough as all that's happened, the silver lining is that one day hopefully I get a passport and a green card," L. said. "To help other people avoid such a hassle will be just as fulfilling for me."

Previous legislative efforts have failed

Legislative bills to extend state financial aid eligibility to asylum-seeking students have been introduced at least twice in recent years but have failed.

One attempt came in 2019, when Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from El Segundo, introduced SB 296, a bill that would have extended Cal Grant eligibility to students with pending asylum applications. The measure passed the Legislature with some bipartisan support, but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said that it would "impose costs on the General Fund that must be weighed in the annual budget process."

“That was frustrating, but I understood it,” Allen told CalMatters. “The real issue is that we don’t have good data. Our schools don’t track asylum seekers, so we can’t easily calculate the cost.”

UC data on asylum-seeking students is protected due to privacy policies, according to Stett Holbrook, a UC spokesperson. The Cal State system reports it has less than 500 students with "asylum status," which includes both those who have an asylum granted and asylum seekers, according to Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith. The numbers are self-reported during the admissions process.

In spring 2025, 13,507 students self-identified as “refugee/asylee” across the California Community Colleges — up from 11,537 the prior semester — per the CCC DataMart. The data does not include a category for just asylum seekers. Students can self-identify their immigration status while applying, but asylum seekers are not specifically tracked, according to the college system’s spokesperson Melissa Villarin.

Four years after SB 296 failed, Democrat Sabrina Cervantes — then representing Riverside in the Assembly and now as a state senator — revived the proposal through AB 888, introduced in 2023. Like Allen’s earlier bill, AB 888 sought to make Cal Grants accessible to students with pending asylum applications by creating a direct eligibility pathway outside the AB 540 residency requirements. The bill passed the Assembly unanimously but was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee last September, effectively ending its chances for the year.

Cervantes declined an interview with CalMatters. “My Assembly Bill 888 would have created a new pathway for pending asylum seekers in California to apply for Cal Grant financial aid in pursuit of their higher education,” Cervantes wrote in a statement.

Newsom’s office declined to say whether he would support a future version of the proposal, pointing instead to his brief 2019 veto message.

“There’s nervousness around anything that involves new expenses," Allen said. “... We’re going to have to spend some time seeing what information we can get with regards to better data to get better estimated costs. I think that will help to better inform the conversation."

Andrea Baltodano and Chrissa Olson are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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