Student loan borrowers in default may see wages garnished in 2026
-
Click here to listen to this article - Share via
- The Trump administration will begin garnishing wages of student loan borrowers in default.
- The move ends the pandemic-era pause on loan collections and affects millions of borrowers who are 270 days or more past due.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will soon begin garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers who are in default.
The Education Department said it will send notices to approximately 1,000 borrowers in early January, with more notices to come in increasing numbers each month.
Millions of borrowers are considered in default, meaning they are 270 days past due on their payments. The department must give borrowers 30 days’ notice before their wages can be garnished.
The department said it will begin collection activities “only after student and parent borrowers have been provided sufficient notice and opportunity to repay their loans.”
In May, the Trump administration ended the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments, beginning to collect on defaulted debt by withholding tax refunds and other federal payments to borrowers.
The move ended a period of leniency for student loan borrowers. Payments restarted in October of 2023, but the Biden administration extended a grace period of one year. Since March 2020, no federal student loans had been referred for collection, including those in default, until the Trump administration’s changes earlier this year.
The Biden administration tried multiple times to give broad forgiveness to student loans, but those efforts were eventually stopped by courts.
Persis Yu, deputy executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the decision to begin garnishing wages, and said the department had failed to sufficiently help borrowers find affordable payment options.
“At a time when families across the country are struggling with stagnant wages and an affordability crisis, this administration’s decision to garnish wages from defaulted student loan borrowers is cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible,” Yu said in a statement. “As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this Administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers’ wages instead of defending borrowers’ right to affordable payments.”
Ma writes for the Associated Press.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
In this episode, we bring you the update on how an Altadena resident and her neighborhood are coming along, plus a re-run of the two-part series we did on the Poppyfields people back in June.
California once bet big on offshore wind to help power its clean-energy future, but the Trump administration is now paying developers billions to walk away from their projects. As California’s remaining offshore-wind leases hang in the balance, the state is fighting back in court.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
