In general, many think that we do not need to carry any documents related to your visa or passport when you are within the US. But, it is not necessarily true, when you are around some of the border states as the lines are not clear and you may run into a border check-point, when you think you are within the US.
I was on a vacation traveling in New Mexico and had around a couple of hours of tense experience as I missed to carry relevant paperwork related to my immigration status, H1B visa, etc. I was stopped and checked by Border security officers (CBP) at an Immigration check point around Las Cruces in the state of New Mexico. In this article, I will share my experience and tell you some key information that was told by CBP officers that is important for all of you to know about carrying Passport and Visa papers all the time.
Article Contents hideWe (myself and a few friends) are on a road trip visiting a few cities in the state of New Mexico. As part of our trip, we ended up traveling a little close to the US border (around 60 miles) on our way in New Mexico State, and we did not know there would be any immigration checkpoint within the US, which is 60 miles away from the Mexico Border. As we thought we would be within the US, we did not carry any of our US visa papers or passports with us and just carried our driver’s licenses with us.
We were stopped at the immigration checkpoint by CBP officers at Las Cruces (around 50 – 60 miles from Mexico border). The first thing they asked was, “ Can you give us your passports and immigration papers indicating your status?”. We said, “we do not have them”. We just gave our Driver’s licenses. The officer took our state-issued driver’s licenses and went to check our immigration status. It took him 40 min to do a basic check, and then he came back and took me to the CBP office and said, “we are not able to verify your legal status info. We see that your visa is expired”. I was searched before entering the office. They took my fingerprints of both hands and had me sit in the lobby outside for almost 45 minutes.
I explained that my H1B visa expired recently, and I got my H1B visa extension filed with USCIS a few months ago. I could see around six people in the CBP office trying to verify my visa info. Some trying to search in the computer, some trying to call other offices and others helping with fax. The situation seemed to be very tense, and they were very serious about checking my immigration information. They asked for my info like SSN, full names of parents, and some other basic information. I was just sitting outside watching the CBP officers do all their work seriously through the glass window, it was not good. No one was smiling. Finally, after all the drama, they could verify my proper legal status information.
The reason for all this drama and the tense situation was that they were not able to verify my proper current legal status and had old information in their system indicating that my visa was expired. They had no updates related to the filing of the H1B extension with USCIS and the final status that it was approved. We think that all systems of USCIS and CBP are connected and integrated, but seems they are not.
USCIS approved my extension a few months ago and gave me a new I-94 along with I797 indicating my proper H1B status, but that information was not updated in the CBP or US border protection office systems (I do not even know if they are connected. seems, there is a disconnect). They had to call many times and do multiple things to verify my immigration information. I gave them the H1B approval notice number starting with EAC, but they could not get much out of it. They were asking for my ‘A’ number or Alien registration number, and I did not had it. Finally, they were able to verify my information.
The CBP officer just told me, “if you are not a US Citizen or permanent resident, legally, YOU HAVE to carry your Passport, I-94, and current Immigration Status document (like I-797 for H1B), whenever you are traveling out of your current resident state.” I told him that I never had this problem and never had to carry these documents before. He just said, “ it is the law, and you are supposed to carry these documents all the time if you are traveling anywhere within US too and not just out of the country”. I told him that I was not aware of this except that in Arizona, it is required with the new law. He was nice and just warned us to carry it next time.
Overall, my assumption that you do not need to carry passport, I-94 and Immigration document if you are traveling within the US was wrong, and I experienced some tense situations. Also, the immigration and USCIS systems seems not as interconnected as we think, so we have to be careful and carry all the papers. You could be in much complicated situation like me if you had H1B expired and got extension, so just avoid this by carrying all the necessary documents if you are traveling out of your current state (especially border states).
