This month, the Trump administration began revoking the existing valid passports of Americans who owe significant child-support debt. Previously, the penalty applied only when individuals with this type of outstanding debt sought to renew their passports.
The State Department began revoking passports on May 8 for parents owing $100,000 or more in child-support arrears as part of the Passport Denial Program. Effective June 1, enforcement will expand to parents owing $75,000 or more. The program will eventually reach all 3.5 million noncustodial parents owing at least $2,500, the legal threshold for passport revocation established in 1996 by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
“Parents have a fundamental responsibility to support their children,” said Alex Adams, assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), in a statement to Afar. “Holding a U.S. passport is a privilege, not a right.” The ACF is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services focused on promoting the well-being of families and children. Mora Namdar, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, backed the sentiment on passport access as “a privilege” in a separate social media statement.
Athar A. Khan, a certified family law specialist in California, says the program’s reach is more complicated than the administration’s framing suggests. “The government is stacking consequences on people who cannot pay, not people who will not pay,” Khan told Afar.
Khan points to how quickly debt piles up under state guidelines. In California, child support is calculated before rent, groceries, or utilities are factored in, and if a parent loses their job and takes a lower-paying one, a court can still hold them to what they previously earned. “A parent ordered to pay $1,500 a month who misses two payments is already past that threshold,” he said. “In my experience, it is very common for parents to owe that much, and the reason is typically not willful avoidance.”
The enforcement tool also works unevenly across income lines, Khan said. According to data from the federal agency overseeing the country’s child-support program, the Office of Child Support Enforcement, the Passport Denial Program’s largest single collections have come from parents such as business travelers and professional athletes. “For lower-income parents who do not travel internationally, this does nothing,” Khan said. “It is just another penalty stacked on top of wage garnishments, license suspensions, and tax intercepts.”
The burden doesn’t end once payments are completed. Even after a parent pays their debt in full, their revoked passport cannot be automatically reinstated. They must apply for a new passport, and a mandatory federal verification process adds at least 2 to 3 weeks to the typical wait time before a new passport can be issued. “A parent can pay what is owed and still be without a valid passport for weeks,” Khan said.
Khan also raised concerns about due process. The program requires no individualized review of whether arrears resulted from willful nonpayment or inability to pay before the person’s passport is canceled. “Proactive revocation of an existing valid passport is a fundamentally different action than denying a renewal application,” he said, “and the procedural safeguards have not caught up to that shift.”
However, the ACF told Afar that the program is working, noting that since reports of the program’s expansion broke in February, hundreds of parents have resolved their arrears. The ACF also told Afar that it is committed to notifying the State Department promptly once a parent’s debt has been verified as paid.
A bill called the Ensuring Children Receive Support Act, which was introduced in December, already passed the House of Representatives and is currently under review by the Senate. This bill would enact stricter rules, making revocation mandatory rather than discretionary for anyone owing more than $2,500, a change that would require an act of Congress to reverse.
For Khan, the shift raises questions that extend beyond child support, with passport revocation being used as potential leverage even when two parties have an existing informal agreement.
“A custodial parent who wants to apply pressure can point to passport revocation as a real consequence, not a hypothetical one,” said Khan. “On the other hand, if the custodial parent doesn’t want this level of consequences, it doesn’t matter. Once the arrears hit the threshold, the state reports it, and neither parent gets a say. A custodial parent who has a working arrangement with the other side, where payments are being made even if not perfectly on schedule, has no ability to stop the government from revoking the other parent’s passport.”
