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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Passport applications surge in Linn County
Wanderlust, political turmoil spur Iowans to secure passports in record numbers
Jan. 18, 2026 5:30 am
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CEDAR RAPIDS — A U.S. passport comes with a lot of perks: visa-free, short-term travel to more than 100 countries, faster processing times at domestic airports and a quick means of proving American citizenship.
Now more than ever, residents across the country — and Iowa — are looking to capitalize on those benefits, and Linn County is among those leading the trend.
During the most recent fiscal year, passport applications to the Linn County Recorder’s Office surged by 41 percent while passport issuance statewide grew by 8 percent. Simultaneously, the U.S. State Department set an all-time record by issuing nearly 27.4 million passports nationwide.
Linn County Recorder Carolyn Siebrecht said there’s no “one definitive answer” for the increase but that it speaks broadly of evolving travel trends and some Iowans’ shifting mindset around global mobility and personal security.
In some ways, “we’re still coming out of COVID, … and we’ve seen a change in the presidency. The post office might have been short-staffed, or we could have just had more people going on vacation,” Siebrecht said. “What’s going on in the world affects what happens in our office, especially.”
Early surge drives annual application increase
The Linn County Recorder's Office received 4,825 passport applications in the 2025 calendar year, up roughly 33 percent from the 3,607 applications received in 2024. The growth is even more pronounced when comparing fiscal years, which for the county run July 1 of one year through June 30 of the next.
A significant portion of that increase can be attributed to a rapid rise in applications seen in the first three months of 2025. Data going back to mid-2022 shows that the office typically sees between 250 and 350 applicants each month.
Early last year, that figure hovered closer to 600-plus.
“We usually get people in and out pretty quick, but there were times (last year) where we had lines of people waiting,” Siebrecht said. “It was crazy for a while.”
That demand abated some in the spring, Siebrecht said, and began to plateau in the summer and fall. Still, monthly numbers remained higher year-over-year through the end of October.
Siebrecht said the surge was similar in some ways to the massive influx of applicants the office saw once it reopened after its COVID-related closure, and she hasn’t ruled the pandemic out as a continuing contributor.
COVID-19 had a significant impact on passport services nationwide that included temporary office closures and massive processing backlogs made worse by an influx of post-lockdown applicants itching for international travel.
Siebrecht said passport applications have been “going gangbusters” ever since and that it’s probable 2025 application totals received an extra boost as leisure travel continues to rebound.
“As long as people have the money to go on vacation, we’ll keep seeing people come in for passports,” she said.
Interest remained high in 2025 for both international and domestic travel, said Rachel Sharp with Travel Leaders/Destinations Unlimited. Sharp said the Cedar Rapids travel agency last year served around 2,250 international and 1,000 domestic leisure travelers.
She said it’s typical to see those figures fluctuate between years, but that 2026 is expected to be another strong year as area residents hit the road, take to the sky or sail the open seas to new and exciting locales.
“One interesting thing is since 2020, one of the travel types that’s really on the rise is cruising,” Sharp noted. “And not necessarily just those large, ‘resort on the water’ cruises. Those are definitely still popular, but we’re seeing a lot of interest in those smaller river and ocean cruisers,” too.
Passports as preparation, protection
While some people apply for passports as a means to travel the world, others do so seeking to secure their right to stay put.
Speaking during the height of the application surge, Siebrecht told the Linn County Board of Supervisors in March that her office had seen an increase in the number of families bringing children in for passports amid rapidly changing immigration policy.
Her update followed an executive order from President Donald Trump meant to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents. The order has been blocked from taking effect by multiple federal courts and is now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The order — issued on the first day of Trump’s second term — kick-started a rapid-fire string of policy changes that has fueled widespread anxiety among immigrant communities around documentation, travel rights and residency.
“That has definitely increased our passport traffic (as people) try to get all that documentation in place,” Siebrecht told supervisors, noting that bilingual county staff from across departments had stepped in to assist with language translation as needed.
Elena Casillas-Hoffman said that trend aligns with an “exponential” increase seen over the last 15 months in terms of demand for naturalization services offered through the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice.
The Des Moines-based nonprofit provides low- or no-cost legal and advocacy services to immigrants and refugees throughout Iowa, including at its Cedar Rapids office.
The need for naturalization services has been growing for years as people work to navigate a complex immigration system, but Casillas-Hoffman said urgency around that work spiked amid a string of 2025 policy changes.
“It comes back to this idea that no immigration status is safe anymore,” she said. “People are doing everything they can as quickly as possible to move to that (naturalized) citizenship status to have that added protection.”
An American passport can serve as a physical symbol of that status, she added, and can be used to swiftly prove U.S. citizenship in instances where such verification is required.
Max Mowitz, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Iowa, said he too has seen a surge of community interest around how and where to secure passports and other personal documents — particularly among transgender Iowans.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily ‘I want to leave the country right now.’ It’s more ‘How many documents can I have locked down now in case I can’t renew or update them later,’” Mowitz said. “Anything that can make someone feel more secure, that’s a good thing to me.”
Already, the Trump administration has made policy changes to require the sex designation on all future U.S. passports to align with travelers’ biological sex, overturning a long-standing rule allowing applicants to choose a different marker as long as they provided certain medical documentation.
The policy change was blocked for a time following several legal challenges, although it ultimately went into effect last fall after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s stay of implementation.
The change also eliminated the option for nonbinary applicants to choose an “X” marker rather than the typical “M” or “F,” which Mowitz experienced firsthand when attempting to apply for the gender-neutral marker on their own passport last year.
Passport demand varies across Iowa
Those factors and others ultimately played out differently across the state, as shown by the varying trends in overall application numbers seen between one passport office and the next.
Polk County Recorder Julie Haggerty said demand has certainly grown for passport services in Iowa’s largest county, leading her office to add additional appointment slots to its offerings. Year-to-year application totals remain similar, however, given that appointment times have expanded gradually.
Some of Linn County’s more rural neighbors such as Benton and Cedar counties report fairly stagnant demand over the past few years, however, and the same is true of Dubuque County despite its relatively larger population.
“I look at it from more of a revenue perspective versus the total number of applications,” said Dubuque County Treasurer Mike Clasen. “And from that perspective, … we’re seeing similar things from year to year.”
It can be difficult to get a true overall snapshot, however, given the existence of passport offices and popup clinics outside counties’ purview. Each acceptance facility records data individually to submit to the U.S. State Department, which releases an annual roundup at the end of each fiscal year.
Postal offices will often act as passport acceptance facilities, for example, as well as some public libraries. While there is no county-run passport office in Johnson County, there is an acceptance facility located at the University of Iowa.
There’s no "crystal ball” to predict what demand will look like in coming years, but Siebrecht said counties are able to look at federal figures and/or connect with other area offices to inform future planning.
Siebrecht anticipates demand for passport services to remain strong in Linn County throughout 2026, although not as drastic as what was seen in 2025. She also said it’s possible the county could see a smaller year-over-year increase when compared to some nationwide projections.
“We don’t anticipate another spike of that magnitude because locally we were higher than that (estimate) the past couple years,” said Siebrecht, who said it’s possible Linn County has already seen the surge predicted in other areas. “I feel like we’re maybe starting to plateau a little bit.”
Those estimates have been built into the budget planning process for consideration alongside other Recorder’s Office operations. The department has submitted a preliminary budget to the Linn County Board of Supervisors with that information, and budget meetings are ongoing for fiscal year 2027.
Comments: grace.nieland@thegazette.com
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