Unsure exactly how I feel about this. Any measures to help support children are welcome. But I suspect people with passports are not the largest group delinquent on their child support-that’s.probably lower-income parents or those struggling yo make ends meet or with mental health or substance abuse issues or are having trouble with unemployment for whatever reason. None of those groups are usually planning international travel.
This feels like a test case to me for normalizing the idea of revoking passports…at a time when it’s being insinuated that we should be carrying proof of citizenship on us at all times. It feels like another attempt to limit our options and movements by trying it first on a group nobody is likely to object to; and when we are used to that, expanding it to others.
And I’m sure Trump’s state department will be acting with complete impartiality, and focusing just as much on the plethora of deadbeat dads in the core Maga demographic as any other non-white demographics
It seems the change is that they’re revoking passports between renewals, rather than waiting for the renewal to yank it as they’d been doing for a long time. YMMV but that doesn’t sound like a huge change.
I agree! The benefits gained from revoking the passports of people who are delinquent in child support will be virtually nothing! If one could afford to actually leave the United States just to avoid child support, he’d pay the support in the first place. It’s like making a law that says, “We are increasing the tax on yachts to discourage people from buying them.” Heck, if someone can afford a yacht, he can afford the taxes.
When I got divorced 16 years ago this was already a thing, but it wasn’t very diligently enforced since they relied on the states to report people heavily in arrears. Since CS laws vary by state I think it will continue to be difficult to enforce. In NJ it’s even worse because it is administered by the county court’s probation office and not centrally by the state government or courts.
If people only became delinquent on child support due to rational material concerns, sure. But in reality there’s often a lot of spite involved. And it doesn’t necessarily take long at all for unpaid child support to add up to significantly more than the low end of the cost of foreign travel.
I’m sure there are some support-owing parents this will bite. But it still seems that the timing of this, and the revision of the rules for no apparent pressing reason, along with the all the other citizen/immigrant/travel/deportation noise these days flags it to me as more of a test case. Whose passports will the State Dept revoke next? People owing fines for traffic tickets? Behind on their credit card payments? Attending a political protest?
We are living in a world where the Executive Branch is openly flouting Congress and the courts and is massively, openly corrupt. It doesn’t seem like any hypotheticals are too extreme any more.
If I understand a previous post correctly, this is about changing timing on an already existing mechanism. I assume it’s substantially harder create an entirely new mechanism (to revoke the passports of nonwhites and Democratic voters), but I don’t know for sure. Is it?
That how I read it. The same is true for almost everything Trump does. He’s using legislation that was written in a way where it can be applied in abusivly, but it was written with the assumption that the people giving the orders are essentially good actors
What you hear is the chip, chip, chipping away of rights. Slowly, inexorably, seemingly random at times, but they’re circling the bowl. I’m not opposed to enforcing payment of child support, but there’s no nexus here.
This is correct. I work in governmental child support, so I’m at least a little familiar with the change.
State child support agencies regularly submit lists of people who owe child support to the State Department. The federal government has always had the ability to revoke passports - but until now, they would only reactively deny an application (or a renewal) when it comes up, rather than do anything proactive.
Professionally, I’m in favor of the policy change as a tool to help enforce child support. Personally, I’m more conflicted. I’m confident in my county (and to a lesser extent, my state)'s ability to be responsible and unbiased in our enforcement of child support. Not so much other states, and certainly not the federal government.
Relatedly - H.R. 6903 was introduced in the house recently, that would mandate this proactive passport revocation. H.R.6903 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): Ensuring Children Receive Support Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
