Former students of predatory, for-profit colleges are suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, claiming the U.S. Department of Education intentionally refused to process their applications for federal loan relief. According to the Huffington Post, DeVos halted the implementation of the Borrower Defense to Repayment regulation in June 2017, leaving the plaintiffs of the lawsuit, and many other students who were not listed, in crippling debt and without a clear path to financial recovery.

I am drowning in more than $120,000 of student debt after being defrauded by a for-profit college, and I refuse to wait for relief from the Trump administration. That’s why I am going on the offense and suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. More than 158,000 other former students are doing the same.

When Morgan Marler’s 5-year-old daughter, Lilian, asks her why she doesn’t work anymore, Marler doesn’t know what to say. “I can’t explain debt to her,” Marler, 29, said. “And how I went to school and it was all for nothing.” Marler attended ITT Technical Institute, a now-shuttered for-profit school, between 2013 and 2016.

Growing up on a farm in Lunenburg, Jessica Jacobson dreamed of becoming the first in her family to go to college. She graduated from Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School in Fitchburg in 2002, and went on to get an associate degree in web design from Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner.

Morgan Marler had trouble finding a job when she graduated from ITT Tech with an associate's degree in information technology in 2016. "I'd get an interview, but after they saw my degree was from ITT Tech -- they didn't necessarily laugh at me -- but I could tell they held it against me," Marler, 29, told CNN this week.

After years working in “dead-end” jobs, Morgan Marler decided to pursue a degree that would help her start a career working with computers. In 2013, Marler enrolled at ITT Technical Institutes feeling convinced they’d help her land a job once she graduated. “They told me about the fact that they do career placement assistance for life,” she said.

When Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned then nominee for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during a confirmation hearing in 2017, DeVos — often cited as the richest member of Donald Trump’s cabinet — seemed to have no personal experience with the federal student-loan application process. “Have you ever taken out a student loan from the federal government to help pay for college?” Warren asked DeVos, to which the billionaire replied, “I have not.”