Washington (CNN) Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education were held in civil contempt by a federal judge on Thursday and ordered to pay damages to student borrowers who took out loans to attend a now defunct for-profit college.

The judge had previously ordered the Department of Education to stop collecting on the loans. But last month, the department admitted that more than 16,000 borrowers were incorrectly informed that they owed a payment on their debt after the court order. About 1,800 had their wages garnished and more than 800 were mistakenly subject to adverse credit reporting.

US Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim wrote in her order Thursday that "there is no question" that DeVos and the department violated the preliminary injunction and "also no question that defendants' violations harmed individual borrowers."

"The evidence shows only minimal efforts to comply with the preliminary injunction," she wrote.

For now, Kim ordered DeVos and the Education Department to pay just $100,000 in damages. But the court order is a setback for DeVos in her effort to undo Obama-era rules on student loan debt.

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