Originally Posted by
alexxn
Originally Posted by
Whytbxfly
Hello everyone. I am an out-of-status exchange student, as my visa expired in 2013.
I want to fly from JFK (New York) to MSY (New Orleans). I’m going to use my country’s government issued valid passport to travel. What are the chances the TSA guys will give me a hard time and possibly introduce me to their ICE and DHS friends ?
Does TSA have the right to question my legal status ?
How risky it is and how likely is for me to encounter with immigration officers ?
I also wonder if it's possible to fly from Houston Hobby airport to San Francisco? With a foreign passport and overstay visa
This is still how it is:
“CBP isn’t frequently doing such checks at JFK or MSY for domestic flights. For airports closer to the Canadian or Mexican land borders, the chances of such CBP checks are higher but still far from commonly experienced. If this were for a domestic trip originating out of say BUF, then the chances are far higher than for a domestic trip out of JFK.
“TSA doesn’t commonly make an issue of foreign passports’ US entry stamps (if any); and absent a need to present other ID/identification (beside the passport) to the TSA, and absent some prejudicial reasoning for CBP to be called by TSA, I wouldn’t expect a problem for such circumstances unless encountering some DHS-CBP and/or airline trial, technology-assisted or otherwise, being run at the time of the trip.”
Same goes for at least IAH and SFO IME.
An apparently overstayed US visa in a person’s passport doesn’t necessarily mean the person is legally prohibited from remaining in the US. Just something to know in case some airline or TSA employee were try to bring up a perceived overstay issue. But for domestic US flights on ticketed itineraries that only have domestic US flights, the airline and TSA travel document checker rarely go beyond looking for passport photo (to match against face of passenger), passport expiration date and names (to match against names on boarding pass). But to minimize chance of confusion, hand over your passport with the passport’s own biodata page open already so that the airline and TSA don’t try to do a document or name check against a US visa.
My travel party members within the US often include people using foreign passports and the TSA has yet to give any of them grief over expired US visas or some US entry stamps which may give the appearance of “overstaying”.
The odds of having a problem when flying HOU/IAH to SFO are very low. Could there be a problem? I am reminded of the line “Never say never.”.