U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon records a selection of patriotic artwork from elementary students and recent works from high school students in a special installation at Exeter-West Greenwich Regional Junior High and High School in Rhode Island on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Education is temporarily backtracking on plans to garnish wages and seize tax refunds from delinquent student loan borrowers, the department announced Friday.
Less than a month After the agency announced it would begin garnishing wages by sending notices to about 1,000 delinquent borrowers in the first full week of January, the department said said that the transient delay would allow him to implement “major student loan repayment reforms” under the Republican tax and spending cuts bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in 2025.
The delay would “give borrowers more opportunities to repay their loans,” the department said.
It was not immediately clear from the announcement how long the pause would last.
Education Minister Linda McMahon gave a signal earlier this week during the Rhode Island As part of her “Returning Education to the States” tour, she explained that wage garnishment has been “suspended for a while.”
The agency resumed debt collection defaulted federal student loans in May after a pause that began in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A borrower can have his wages garnished if he fails to repay his loans, and a borrower can order an employer to withhold up to 15% of his disposable wages to collect defaulted debts without going to court Federal Student Aidan office of the Ministry of Education.
The delay also applies to the Treasury Offset Program, which “allows the federal government to collect income tax refunds and certain government benefits (e.g., Social Security benefits) from individuals who owe debts to the federal government,” the notice said FSA.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Friday: “After months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump administration says it has abandoned plans to deprive working people of their hard-earned money directly from their paychecks and tax refunds simply because they default on their student loans.”
“Amid the growing affordability crisis, the government’s plans would have been economically reckless and risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulting borrowers further into debt,” she added, citing a Letter dated January 7th from Protect Borrowers and other organizations calling on McMahon to “immediately halt his plan to resume garnishing the wages of millions of troubled borrowers.”
