The U.S. passports of parents who owe past-due child support are increasingly becoming subject to revocation based on 30-year-old federal legislation.
Revocations for mothers and fathers who owe $100,000 or more began on May 8, according to the U.S. State Department.
“Once these parents resolve their debts, they can once again enjoy the privilege of a U.S. passport,” Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said.
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) estimates that some 2,700 individuals with overdue child support payments will potentially be impacted.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, known as the Welfare Reform Act, created the Passport Denial Program.
It allows the government to deny the passports of parents who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support.
“We are expanding a commonsense practice that has been proven effective at getting those who owe child support to pay their debt,” Namdar said.
What’s new under the law is that the State Department had only revoked a deadbeat parent’s passport when they tried to renew or sought other assistance from the consulate.
Now the department will begin cancelling passports based on information obtained from DHHS, according to sources familiar with the program.
State department officials did not respond to requests for comment on when the policy will begin to apply to parents who owe $2,500 in back pay.
The expansion of the program was initially announced on Feb. 10 after the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Work and Welfare held a hearing on strengthening the Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program on Jan. 26.
At the time, the department said hundreds of parents took action and resolved their back pay with court authorities when they learned that the government was becoming proactive about cancelling passports.
“While we can’t confirm the causation in all of those cases, we are taking this action precisely to impel these parents to do the right thing by their children and by U.S. law,” the department said.
The CSE program, which serves more than 11 million families and applies to about 20 percent of all children nationwide, collected some $26 billion in child support payments in 2024 and delivered more than four dollars to families for every dollar spent, according to data from the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Work and Welfare.