on August 24 that the Education Department still can't find 11,000 borrowers who had their wages garnished during the pandemic due to invalid addresses, according to data obtained by Student Defense — the organization that sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in 2020 forGiven that the freeze on student-loan payments is set to lift in February and borrowers have still not gotten refunds from illegal wage seizures, advocates and lawmakers say borrowers need more time to financially prepare.
"The Department of Education illegally took this money from student loan borrowers, and it's their responsibility to figure out how to return it," Dan Zibel, chief counsel and co-founder of Student Defense, previously told Insider."In the meantime, this shows that the Department has no business restarting administrative wage garnishment anytime soon.
They wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that although the CARES Act initially paused student-loan payments during the pandemic, the Education Department and Treasury Department still"improperly garnished and withheld" over $200 million from about 390,000 borrowers during this time.
"Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, collections on defaulted student loans were catastrophic for borrowers in default, who saw their wages, tax refunds, and even Social Security checks confiscated, in addition to being forced to pay exorbitant fees," the Democrats wrote.Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know.
Awful! This is inhuman. Money earned from hours of work is gone to the banks. Where're the politicians talking about this?