Friday, May 8, 2026 - The State Department will begin revoking the U.S. passports of thousands of parents who owe a significant amount of unpaid child support.
The department told The Associated Press on Thursday, May 7,
that the revocations would begin Friday, May 8, and be focused on those who owe
$100,000 or more. That would apply to about 2,700 American passport holders,
according to figures supplied to the State Department by the Department of
Health and Human Services.
The revocation program will soon be
expanded to cover parents who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support,
which is a threshold set by a little-enforced 1996 law, the AP reported, citing the
State Department.
It was not clear on Thursday how many passport holders owe
more than $2,500 because HHS is still collecting data from state agencies that
track the figures, but it could encompass many more thousands of people,
officials said.
Until this week, only those who applied to renew their
passports were subject to the penalty. Under the new policy, HHS will inform
the State Department of all past-due payments of more than $2,500 and parents
in that group with passports will have their documents revoked, the department
said.
"We are expanding a commonsense practice that has been
proven effective at getting those who owe child support to pay their
debt," Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said.
"Once these parents resolve their debts, they can once again enjoy the
privilege of a U.S. passport."
Since the AP reported the expansion of the program on Feb.
10, the department said it had "seen data that hundreds of parents took
action and resolved their arrears with state authorities since news broke that
the State Department would start proactively revoking 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.
Even before the policy was expanded, the department said the
program had been a "powerful tool" to get parents to pay what they
owed. It said that since it began in earnest in 1998, states had collected some
$657 million in arrears, including more than $156 million in over 24,000
individual lump-sum payments over the past five years.
Those whose passports are revoked under the program will be
notified that they will not be able to use their documents for travel and will
have to apply for a new passport once their arrears are confirmed as
paid.
A passport holder who is abroad at the time of revocation
will need to visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to obtain an emergency travel
document that allows them to return to the United States.
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