U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced plans for changes to its procedures for processing information sent to CBP by airlines (and possibly also train, bus, and ferry operators) about passengers on international routes with non-binary or non-gendered “X” gender marker passports, to take effect on Tuesday, October 12, 2025. The planned changes were […]
Earlier this month, as part of a lengthy and complex bill to reauthorize the US State Department, the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) revived a proposal that had been rejected but came close to passage in 2017 to authorize the Secretary of State to summarily deny or revoke the […]
The US State Department is withholding passports from some US citizens, effectively denying them the ability to leave or return to the US, without any basis in law or regulations. Multiple news outlets have reported that the State Department has ordered its staff in the US and abroad to “suspend” processing of all pending applications […]
More than 100,000 US citizens — almost ten times as many as the State Department had projected — have been required to complete one or both of two impossible “long form” supplements to their applications for US passports, according to records we received this month in response to a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request […]
As we mark twenty years since the creation of this website for the Identity Project, perhaps it’s time to assess the state of freedom of movement in the USA and for US citizens. We’ve been reporting, in more detail than anyone else, on changes in policies and practices that affect our right to travel freely. […]
The triennial general assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is underway in Montreal for its first session since the outbreak of COVID-19, with speakers at its opening plenary last week including US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. It’s been many years since the US delegation to an ICAO meeting has included a Cabinet […]
In late 2015, as we noted at the time, Congress voted — as part of an unrelated surface transportation bill — to authorize the Department of State to revoke and/or refuse to issue a U.S. passport to anyone against whom the IRS has assessed an administrative lien or levy (even in the absence of any […]
Today the Appropriations Committee of the California Assembly held another hearing on A.B. 2004, a bill that would add to state law a provision that: An issuer, including an issuer that is a public entity, of COVID-19 test results or other medical test results may use verifiable credentials, as defined by the World Wide Web […]
A report released earlier this month by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General confirms that, as we and others began reporting in 2013 and 2014, State Department staff “failed to comply with relevant procedures intended to safeguard the rights of U.S. citizens” when they summarily seized or retained the passports of US citizens who […]
A report in the Washington Post last week has brought renewed attention to the US State Department’s ongoing denial of passports to many US citizens. The Washington Post story focuses on Mexican-Americans whose passports have been revoked or whose applications for new or renewal passports have been officially or effectively denied, and suggests that, “under […]