Just last month, Lorena Tule-Romain was encouraging families with mixed citizenship to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. She and her staff at ImmSchools, a nonprofit dedicated to improving educational access for immigrants in Dallas, walked students and parents through the complicated federal aid process. Along the way, they offered reassurance that information revealing their undocumented status would be securely held by the Department of Education alone.
Two weeks ago, ImmSchools stopped offering those services. And Tule-Romain said they’re no longer recommending families fill out the FAFSA.
That’s because the Department of Government Efficiency, a White House office run by Elon Musk, now has access to Education Department data systems, potentially including sensitive student loan and financial aid information for millions of students, according to sources both outside and within the department who spoke with Inside Higher Ed.
With immigration officers conducting a blitz of deportations over the past few weeks—and the new possibility of ICE raids at public schools and college campuses—Tule-Romain is worried that applying for federal aid could put undocumented families in jeopardy. Instead of answering parents’ questions about the FAFSA contributor form, she’s hosting Know Your Rights workshops to prepare them for ICE raids.
“Before, we were doing all we could to encourage families to apply for federal aid, to empower students to break cycles and go to college,” she said. “Now we are not in a position to give that advice. It’s heartbreaking.”
Student data is technically protected by the Privacy Act of 1974, which prevents departments from sharing personally identifying information unless strict exceptions are met or a law is passed to allow it. The FUTURE Act, for example, gave the IRS access to financial aid data to simplify the FAFSA process.
Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told Inside Higher Ed that because DOGE has not said why they might be interested in department data or what data they have access to, it’s unclear if they’re acting in accordance with the law.
In the past, that law has been strictly enforced for federal employees. In 2010, nine people were accused of accessing President Barack Obama’s student loan records while employed for an Education Department contractor in Iowa. The charges levied against them in federal court were punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000, according to the Associated Press.
On Thursday, Democratic Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia wrote to the Government Accountability Office requesting a review of the Education Department’s information technology security and DOGE’s interventions in the department in order to determine their legality and the “potential impact on children.” On Friday, a group of students at the University of California sued department officials for allowing potential privacy act violations.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive, unprecedented, and dangerous,” the plaintiffs wrote.
In recent days, labor unions and other groups have sued to block DOGE”s access to databases at several federal agencies and have secured some wins. Early Saturday morning, a federal judge prohibited DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data, ordering Musk’s team to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material” from the department’s systems.
Concerns about DOGE’s use of private student data come as Musk and his staff take a hacksaw to agencies and departments across the federal government, seeking to cut spending and eliminate large portions of the federal workforce. The Trump administration has singled out the Education Department in particular, threatening to gut its administrative capacity or eliminate the department all together.
Spokespeople for DOGE did not respond to a list of questions from Inside Higher Ed. Madi Biederman, the Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, wrote in an email that DOGE staff “have the necessary background checks and clearances” to view department data and are “focused on making the department more cost-efficient, effective and accountable to the taxpayers.”
“There is nothing inappropriate or nefarious going on,” she added. She did not respond to questions about what data DOGE has access to or how they plan to use it.
A ‘Gaping Hole’ in Data Security
The Education Department’s student financial aid systems contain unique private information that families submit through FAFSA: not only social security numbers but also addresses of relatives, property taxes, sources of income and more. The National Student Loan Database, which tracks loan borrowers’ repayment history and which DOGE may also have access to, includes a wealth of personally identifying information for many more millions of current and former students.
A current department staffer provided Inside Higher Ed with a screenshot from the department’s email address catalog containing the names of 25 DOGE employees who may have access to student data—including a 19-year-old who, according to a Bloomberg report, was once fired by a cybersecurity firm for allegedly leaking internal data. And the Washington Post reported that DOGE employees fed sensitive education department data through artificial intelligence software.
“It could become a gaping hole in our cybersecurity infrastructure,” a former department official said. “I cannot stress enough how unusual it is to just give people access willy-nilly.”
Two former department officials told Inside Higher Ed it is unclear how the DOGE officials could have legally gained access to department data. McCarthy compared DOGE’s murky activity in the department to a “massive data breach within the federal government.”
“Normally, there’d be a paper trail telling us what they’ve requested access to and why,” she said. “We don’t have that, so there’s a lot of uncertainty and fear.”
A current department official told Inside Higher Ed that DOGE staff have been given access to PartnerConnect, which includes information about college programs that receive federal financial aid funding; and that they have read-only access to a financial system. Neither of those databases contain personally identifying information, but the official wasn’t sure DOGE’s access was limited to those sources—and said department staff are worried sensitive student information could be illegally accessed and disbursed.
“It just creates a kind of shadow over the work that everyone’s doing,” a prior department official said.
Fears of a FAFSA ‘Chilling Effect’
Families with mixed citizenship status were some of the hardest hit by the error-riddled FAFSA rollout last year, with many reporting glitches that prevented them from applying for aid until late last summer.
Tule-Romain said mixed-status families in her community had only just begun to feel comfortable with the federal aid form. In the past few weeks that progress has evaporated, she said, and high school counselors working with ImmSchools report a concerning decline in requests for FAFSA consultations from mixed-status students.
“If they weren’t already hesitant, they are extremely hesitant now,” Tule-Romain said.
It’s not just mixed-status families who could be affected if data is shared or leaked. McCarthy said that concerns about privacy could have a wide-spread “chilling effect” on federal aid applications.
“There have always been parents who are reluctant to share their information and the counterargument we always fall back on are the privacy laws,” she said. “A lot of Pell money could get left on the table, or students could be discouraged from going to college altogether.”
Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, said that after last year’s bungled FAFSA rollout, community organizations and government officials had worked hard to rebuild trust in the system and get completion rates back to normal. She worries that fears about privacy could set back those efforts significantly.
“Chaos and uncertainty won’t give us the FAFSA rebound we need,” she said.
The confusion could also affect current college students who need to renew their FAFSA soon. Tule-Romain said one undocumented parent who filled out her first form with ImmSchools last year came back a few weeks ago asking for advice.
She was torn: on the one hand, she didn’t trust Musk and Trump’s White House not to use the information on the form to deport her. On the other, if her son didn’t receive federal aid, he’d have to drop out of college. Ultimately, she chose to renew the application.
“If you came [to America] for a better life, you cannot let fear stop you from pursuing that,” Tule-Romain said. “Instead, you arm yourself with knowledge and you move forward—maybe with fear, but you move forward anyway.”
