Beginning this Monday, numerous federal student loan borrowers will receive emails from their loan servicers with the subject line "Your Student Loans Have Been Forgiven."
This action is part of the Biden administration's previously declared initiative to cancel debt for 804,000 borrowers who qualify for relief under their repayment plans but have not yet received it due to what officials have identified as administrative shortcomings.
These emails were scheduled to commence on Monday, as confirmed notices to borrowers, exclusively obtained by ABC News, reveal.
Anticipated announcements of relief are expected to reach over 800,000 borrowers in the following weeks. By the end of Monday, the Department of Education estimated it had eliminated debt for over 200,000 individuals.
Approximately 614,000 individuals are set to have their complete student loan debts expunged, while others might still have outstanding loans acquired at various times.
The relief targets those who enrolled in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, which allow federal government forgiveness of student loan debts after 20 or 25 years of payments, depending on the plan.
However, due to documented errors in payment tracking, many IDR plan participants have found themselves making payments well beyond their intended end dates, with no signs of forgiveness.
MORE: Biden cancels $130M in debt for students who were 'ripped off' by Colo. college President Joe Biden, whose administration has faced legal setbacks and conservative criticism in pursuing broader student loan cancellation, has hailed the start of these adjustments as a step toward repairing what he referred to as the fractured student loan system.
"Under these plans, if a borrower makes 20 or 25 years’ worth of payments, they get the remaining balances of their loans forgiven. But because of errors and administrative failures of the student loan system that started long before I took office, over 804,000 borrowers never got the credit they earned, and never saw the forgiveness they were promised - even after making payments for decades," Biden stated in a communication to ABC News.
"I was determined to right this wrong," he affirmed.
Impacted borrowers under IDR plans should anticipate receiving emails from their loan servicers with the subject line "Your Student Loans Have Been Forgiven," accompanied by a message reading, "Congratulations! The Biden-Harris Administration has forgiven your federal student loan(s) listed below with [servicer name] in full."
PHOTO: Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks during a back-to-school K-12 Cybersecurity Summit in the East Room of the White House, Aug. 8, 2023. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks during a back-to-school K-12 Cybersecurity Summit in the East Room of the White House, Aug. 8, 2023. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Administration officials were unable to provide an exact timeline for the completion of the relief distribution, attributing the complexity of reviewing each individual loan. Nonetheless, they assured that the process would conclude within weeks.
The possibility of lawsuits potentially interrupting debt discharges remains, although a recent suit filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of the Cato Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, contending that the Department of Education is exceeding its authority, was recently dismissed by a U.S. district court judge in Michigan.
At present, the Department of Education is proceeding with the plan to discharge debt for eligible borrowers.
“We are standing up for borrowers who did everything right, but whose progress toward forgiveness went uncounted due to past administrative failures that the Biden-Harris team has worked tirelessly to correct," stated Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
In total, the Department of Education's rectifications to IDR plans will result in $39 billion in automatic debt relief, as previously reported by ABC News.
Advocates for debt relief view Monday's action as "delayed justice."
"The Biden Administration kept its latest promise to 800,000 people who were repeatedly failed by the broken student loan system. For these borrowers, the prospect of delayed justice will be life changing," remarked Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel for the Student Borrower Protection Center.
Detractors, such as Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, have criticized the relief as an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.
“The Biden administration’s blatantly political attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court is shameful. The Biden administration is trampling the rule of law, hurting borrowers, and abusing taxpayers to chase headlines," she asserted in a statement when the policy was announced last month. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, Wikimedia commons.