The U.S. Department of Labor has reversed its decision to halt enrollment of new students at two Job Corps centers in Maine.

Sen. Susan Collins announced in a release Friday that the department had told her the two Maine locations — the Loring Job Corps Center in Limestone and the Penobscot Jobs Corps Center in Bangor — are to reopen for enrollment.

Sens. Angus King and Collins, along with dozens of their colleagues, pushed back against the Trump administration when it announced a pause on operations at 99 Job Corps sites across the nation this past summer.

“Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training and community,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in an announcement in May. “However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.”

Collins wrote a letter to Chavez DeRemer urging enrollment to resume at the state’s two locations, which serve a combined 500 students in Maine.

The Bangor location opened in 1980 and the Limestone one in 1997. The latter has since become one of the largest employers in rural Maine, with 129 employees, according to Collins.

“I will always advocate for these centers that do so much good in Maine and across the country for vulnerable young people,” Collins said in a statement Friday. 

In June, King and 39 other senators wrote a letter criticizing the “unconstitutional and illegal” cuts to the Job Corps program.

“The sudden ‘pause’ of operations at Job Corps centers puts young people’s lives at risk, especially a significant number of students who were experiencing homelessness before arriving to the program,” they wrote. “Local communities will pay a steep price, especially the thousands of individuals who work at the centers and will lose their livelihoods.”

A spokesperson for King did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.