Some 5 million Americans with defaulted student loan payments will have their loans sent for collections on May 5, the Department of Education announced on Monday.

Next month, for the first time since student loan payments were paused due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Education Department will collect the debts from borrowers who had defaulted -- which means they hadn’t paid their debts for around nine months or 270 days -- before the pandemic.

President Trump moving student loans from the Education Department to the Small Business Administration (SBA) is rattling those affected, who say it is prime evidence that the White House has no real plan for its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.  

Trump signed an executive order Thursday seeking to wind down the Education Department, and he said student loans would move to the SBA the next day — the same day that agency announced it was cutting 40 percent of its workforce.   

President Donald Trump continued the unwinding of the U.S. Department of Education on Friday, announcing that the management of the entire federal student loan portfolio and of the department's "special needs" programs would be moved to other federal agencies effective immediately.

Appearing in the Oval Office with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump said, "I've decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler, a terrific person, will handle all of the student loan portfolio. We have a portfolio that's very large," Trump said.

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Thursday that will make the Department of Education “much smaller than it is today,” but keep some “critical functions,” such as Title I and student loans, under federal control, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, confirming previous reports Trump will implement the long-promised order later in the day.

President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Thursday directing the shutdown of the U.S. Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge to eliminate the agency, which has long been a conservative target.

Federal student loan payments, federal funding for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Title I funding for low-income schools will remain unchanged under the order, according to reports.

The Education Department will suspend student loan payments and interest for around 8 million borrowers after a Thursday court order blocked the Biden administration’s latest repayment program.

A federal appeals court will allow a key part of President Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan to resume as the legal challenges against it unfold.

In a Sunday ruling, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals granted the Biden administration’s request to stay an order from last week that temporarily blocked a provision of its Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan.

After federal judges in Kansas and Missouri sided in favor of Republican attorneys general by blocking parts of President Joe Biden’s student loan repayment program, the Department of Education announced it is freezing monthly student loan payments and interests of 3 million borrowers.

Cody Gude was counting the seconds until July when his monthly student loan payment was scheduled to drop to $100 from $200.

The lower payment meant that he would no longer need to deliver groceries on Instacart in his spare time, on top of his work as a social media consultant.

“I could breathe,” the 35-year-old Tampa, Florida, resident said.