U.S. passport
Noman Sabit:The Trump administration will start to revoke passports of Americans who owe child support in excess of $100,000 dollars, which would apply to around 2,700 U.S. passport holders, according to The Associated Press.
Revocations will begin Friday, and while it will initially focus on those with excessive child support debt, the program could soon lower its threshold to those who owe more than $2,500 in unpaid child support. The number of Americans impacted by that lower threshold remains to be seen, however, as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) continues to collect data from state agencies responsible for tracking those figures.
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.
Newsweek reached out to the State Department by submission form for further information.
Reports that the administration was considering this initiative first emerged in February, noting that it relied on a little-known 1996 law, which allows the State Department to revoke passports over unpaid child support exceeding $2,500, but the tool has rarely been used: Enforcement was generally only enacted when a parent approached a U.S. consulate or embassy for support. Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar told the Associated Press that those who lose their passports can regain them once they “resolve their debts.”
“We are expanding a commonsense practice that has been proven effective at getting those who owe child support to pay their debt,” Namdar said.
The State Department also told the Associated Press that since reports broke in February about the expanded plan, “hundreds of parents took action and resolved their arrears with state authorities.” However, the department has not yet made clear if this is a universal policy or if certain exemptions will be allowed based on circumstances.
According to census data, in 2022, about 4.7 million custodial parents who had legal or informal agreements for child support were supposed to receive, on average, around $6,400 annually – or around $530 per month.
The median amount for child support in 2022 was around $4,800, meaning that half of those set to receive child support would receive less than that amount and half would receive more.
This means that custodial parents were supposed to collectively receive around $29.9 billion in child support payments – but they only received around $19.2 billion. Of that, 16.2 billion of an expected $25.2 billion went to mothers and $3 billion of an expected $4.8 billion went to fathers.
Since 1998, the State Department through its enforcement against issuing passports forced repayment of $657 million in arrears, with $156 million of that sum paid over the past five years.
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