Guess Who’s Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness: New ICE Agents

As President Donald Trump plots to halt student loan forgiveness for many government and nonprofit workers, his administration is offering a special type of debt relief to one category of workers: new ICE agents. 

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday it will offer student loan forgiveness and repayment options to new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits — along with a $50,000 signing bonus. 

The announcement comes as the Trump administration works to limit the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for groups the president considers political enemies. Since 2007, borrowers employed by the government or nonprofit organizations serving a wide range of public interest causes have been eligible for forgiveness through PSLF. 

But in July, the Department of Education took a major step in altering the program’s rules to exclude certain employers in accordance with Trump’s executive order “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” which claims the loan forgiveness “has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means.” Under the revised rules, nonprofits that help transgender youth access gender-affirming care and attorneys who provide legal assistance to undocumented immigrants, among others, might no longer qualify, according to the press release from the Department of Education.

Final language has yet to be published; before it takes effect, there will be an opportunity for public comment. 

Experts in higher education and student debt told The Intercept that the administration is deploying the financial aid system as a tool to advance its political agenda, punish perceived enemies, and reward allies. 

“This just shows the lengths that the Trump administration will go to to weaponize Public Service Loan Forgiveness and debt more broadly to achieve their fascist objectives,” said Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center. 

Over the last few years, Republicans have fought to limit student debt relief for borrowers. Last year, Republican attorneys general successfully lobbied the Supreme Court to pause the SAVE Plan, an income-based repayment plan implemented by the Biden administration that allowed borrowers to make smaller monthly payments and achieve debt relief within a shorter time frame. The Big, Beautiful, Bill signed by Trump in July eliminates the SAVE Plan as of July 1, 2028, and replaces it with significantly less generous repayment options for student loans. 

“We’re going to see a wave of defaults happening, and we’re going to see more people who can’t afford their payments.”

On Friday, the Department of Education resumed interest accrual on SAVE Plan loans, meaning nearly 8 million borrowers are now seeing their debt grow. 

On top of that, the spending bill creates new limits on federal borrowing for graduate students and parents taking out loans on behalf of their children — meaning families and people attending higher cost educational programs such as medical school will likely have to take out higher interest private loans.

“We’re going to see a wave of defaults happening, and we’re going to see more people who can’t afford their payments,” said Sara Partridge, associate director of higher education at the Center for American Progress.

Partridge said implementing changes that will make life harder for millions of borrowers while championing debt forgiveness for ICE agents is peak hypocrisy. “It is hypocritical to provide additional funding for debt relief for certain categories of workers while seeking to deny it to everyday Americans,” said Partridge. 

Sam Alig, 36, a borrower enrolled on the SAVE Plan, said Republicans and the administration have left borrowers in chaos as they scramble to figure out how much they’ll owe under the new income-based repayment systems.

“It’s such a mess,” said Alig. “Every single time I call, they tell me something else. … It’s $400 [per month] now. Six months from now, it could be $800, I have no idea.”

The irony of the new DHS announcement isn’t lost on Alig. “It’s also funny that Republicans are going to get behind student forgiveness when it comes to ICE agents, because they’re so against student loan forgiveness for the entire working and middle class.” 

It’s not completely clear how the ICE loan forgiveness program will be funded. The departments of Homeland Security and Education did not respond to requests for comment. The influx of $170 billion for DHS from the new spending bill could be a mechanism to help pay off new recruits loans.

Government agencies can use their own funding to offer loan assistance as a recruitment and retention strategy via a separate initiative, the Federal Student Loan Repayment program, which allows agencies to repay federal student loans for their employees up to $10,000 a year and $60,000 per employee.

The contrast between how the Trump administration is treating most borrowers and ICE agents is “shocking,” said Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at EdTrust, an education-focused nonprofit. 

“The Department of Education is effectively putting other people’s cancellations on hold, while fast-tracking this other group of folks who haven’t done anything to warrant cancellation,” said Pilar. “To me, it’s outrageous, and it shows where the priority of this administration is.” 

The expected changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program will likely face legal challenge, Partridge said. 

“I’m sure there’s going to be a lawsuit against it, but still,” said Partridge, “it’s a major abuse of power for the government to wield this tool to advance its political ends and to propose denying loan forgiveness to borrowers who work for organizations that this administration disfavors.” 

The rule hasn’t been published yet, but Partridge said it’s expected to impact a wide range of people who have been targets in the Trump administration.

“This administration is wielding the power of the federal financial aid system to advance its ideological goals.”

“If enacted, [it would] deny Public Service Loan Forgiveness to people at organizations doing work that this administration disagrees with, particularly those who do things such as providing legal services to immigrants or providing gender-affirming care,” said Partridge. 

The vague language around “substantial illegal purposes” also opens the door for more groups to be cut out of the program. “It also would allow the administration to deny loan forgiveness to people who work at organizations that they say violate state law, and that includes trespassing, which we know historically has been used against protesters,” she said. “So there are ways that this administration is wielding the power of the federal financial aid system to advance its ideological goals.”

Weaponizing the cost of an education isn’t a new tactic from the right. Amid nationwide campus protests against the Vietnam War, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan and his political allies slashed the budget for public universities, forcing them to charge tuition, arguing that students had become too radical. “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go through higher education],” Reagan’s education adviser, Roger A. Freeman, told the San Francisco Chronicle. 

“There is a very robust history about how debt has been used as a lever of social control,” said Yu. “[Student debt] is a force that can keep people in place, keep people in line. … That is why it is being wielded as a weapon against people who work in fields that they don’t like, and rewarding folks who work in fields that they do like.” 

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