State Department Begins Revoking Passports From Parents Who Owe $100,000 in Unpaid Child Support

The State Department began revoking the U.S. passports of thousands of parents who owe more than $100,000 in unpaid child support on Friday, kicking off an enforcement push that the Trump administration says will eventually expand to cover anyone with more than $2,500 in arrears. The first wave will target roughly 2,700 passport holders certified to the agency by the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department confirmed in a release from the Office of the Spokesperson.

The legal authority dates to a 1996 federal statute that allows the State Department to deny or revoke passports of parents whose unpaid child support exceeds $2,500, but successive administrations have applied the rule narrowly, mostly refusing new applications rather than yanking existing books. Friday's action represents the most aggressive use of the statute since it was enacted. "For too long, parents who owe enormous amounts of court-ordered child support have been able to travel freely overseas while their children go without," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement. "That ends now."

Under the program, HHS's Office of Child Support Services maintains a database of parents whose certified arrears exceed the federal threshold. Once a name is forwarded to the State Department, the passport is flagged for revocation by the bureau of Consular Affairs, and the holder is sent a written notice. Holders abroad at the time of revocation will be eligible only for a limited-validity passport for direct return to the United States, after which they must contact the state where the debt is owed before any new passport will be reissued. HHS officials said the agency plans to begin processing arrears as low as $2,500 by late summer, a move that could put hundreds of thousands of additional parents at risk of losing their travel documents.

Family-law experts said the policy is likely to face legal challenges and will hit some debtors who genuinely cannot pay, particularly low-income fathers in the South and Mountain West who account for a disproportionate share of certified arrears. "This is a hammer, and hammers do not always hit the right nails," said Rebekah Smith, executive director of the Center for Family Policy and Practice in Madison, Wisconsin. Smith noted that nearly half of the parents who owe more than $30,000 in arrears earn less than $20,000 a year, and that pulling their passports could cost some of them long-haul trucking jobs that require occasional cross-border travel.

The White House framed the move as part of a broader Trump administration crackdown on what it calls "deadbeat parents" and a complement to enforcement actions Republicans are pushing through Congress, including a measure that would make federal student-loan and tax refund offsets automatic for parents with court-ordered arrears. Congresswoman Kat Cammack of Florida, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Social Security, said in a statement that she supported the State Department action and would introduce legislation later this month to allow the IRS to garnish gig-economy income for child-support obligations.

Democrats were divided. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, said child-support enforcement was "a moral imperative," but added that the administration should pair the crackdown with expanded job-training and parenting-time programs. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, called the policy "a punitive measure that will hurt poor parents while doing nothing for wealthy ones who hide their assets offshore." The State Department said it would publish quarterly data on revocations and reinstatements beginning in October.