False claim migrants in the US illegally need passports for air or land travel | Fact check
The claim: Individuals in the US illegally must now carry a passport to travel by air or land
[En Espa?ol: Falso: inmigrantes que están ilegalmente en EE.UU. necesitan pasaporte para viajar]
A March 17 Instagram video (direct link, archive link) shows a man talking about immigration documentation.
"Immigrants who do not have legal immigration status from this moment on, if you want to travel, even within the United States whether on local flights or by land by vehicle, you must carry your passport from this moment on,” says the commentator in the video.
The post garnered more than 6,000 likes in five days.
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Our rating: False
The Transportation Security Administration accepts passports and other forms of identification, such as a driver's license, for individuals who are in the country illegally and want to travel. Such travelers without passports will need to verify identities with facial recognition to travel.
The TSA accepts passports and other forms of identification
The TSA accepts various identification from travelers, including foreign government-issued passports and state-issued enhanced driver's licenses.
“To travel domestically in the U.S., TSA requires a valid form of identification which can be either a state- or federal-issued identification document,” Kelley Ortega, an attorney at the Jaime Barron Immigration Law Group, told USA TODAY. “A foreign passport is also often accepted. In practice, lots of individuals who are apprehended and released at the border either have no passport or have their passport confiscated and, as such, would not be able to present a valid identification to travel by plane with TSA upon their release.”
The post may be based on a report from the Associated Press on March 14 that noted the government has started requiring migrants without passports to submit to facial recognition technology to verify their identity if they want to take a domestic flight. But there are no reputable reports of passports being required to travel at all, contrary to the post's claim that they are mandatory even for land-based travel.
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For immigrants already in the country illegally, 19 states and the District of Columbia allow them to obtain driver’s licenses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A driver's license is a document approved by the TSA for boarding a flight.
USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources:
Transportation Security Administration, accessed March 21, Acceptable Identification at the TSA Checkpoint
Kelley Ortega, March 21, Email exchange and phone call with USA TODAY
Associated Press, March 14, Migrants lacking passports must now submit to facial recognition to board flights in US
National Conference of State Legislatures, March 13, 2023, States Offering Driver’s Licenses to Immigrants
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim migrants need passports for any US travel | Fact check