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1 1 (May 5, 2026)

handle is hein.crs/goveuez0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional ____ atResearch Service The Child Support Enforcement Passport Denial Program Updated May 5, 2026 The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) Passport Denial Program is a mandatory enforcement mechanism that applies to noncustodial parents who owe past-due child support. The program was originally enacted as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA; P.L. 104-193) and was to apply to individuals owing more than $5,000 in past-due support. Subsequently, the Deficit Reduction Act of2005 (DRA; P.L. 109-171) lowered this threshold to $2,500. As implemented, the program prevents individuals that meet the arrears criteria from obtaining or renewing a passport, and it can also revoke passports under certain circumstances. Overview of the Passport Denial Program All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and 63 tribal nations operate CSE programs pursuant to Title IV-D of the Social Security Act (this report collectively refers to these as state CSE programs). The program is federally administered by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The program is estimated to handle the majority of all child support cases; the remaining cases are handled by private attorneys and collection agencies, or through mutual agreements between parents. In FY2024, the program served 11.6 million cases and collected an estimated $26.7 billion in child support, of which $7.5 billion was for obligations that were past due. The amount of arrears paid were about 6% of the $115.7 billion in cumulative arrears owed to cases enforced by the program. Title IV-D stipulates that child support collected on behalf of families receiving certain forms of public assistance be retained by the state to reimburse it and the federal government for the cost of that assistance; the rest is distributed to families. One of the enforcement methods available to the CSE program for collecting past-due support is denying, revoking, or limiting passports pursuant to Section 452(k) of the Social Security Act (SSA). Since the inception of the CSE Passport Denial Program, combined collections due to this enforcement method have been nearly $621 million, with $30 million in 2024. Passport denial occurs as part of the Federal Collections and Enforcement Program, and operates through a partnership between state CSE programs, OCSE, and the Department of State (DOS, the federal agency Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov IN12660 CRS INSIGHT Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress