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Someone I know (Finnish national) was robbed of her passport in San Diego this evening and needs to go by bus to Los Angeles tomorrow (i.e. today in Europe).

She is in WT status, and holds an original national ID card (with exactly the same info as in a passport, except the document number is different) and a laptop with a PDF copy of her passport and internet access to look up her admission record on the I-94 website.

If the Border Patrol boards the bus at the San Clemente checkpoint, how much hassle is she likely to face with the above mentioned combination of documents? Although she has reported the passport theft, she's not been able to get a written confirmation of it yet.

Logically, her ID card should establish identity+nationality, and the I-94 status, but one concern I have is the fact that her ID card has a different document number from the one tied to the I-94 (i.e. the passport)

Crazydre
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1 Answers1

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So in the end:

The bus was stopped by the Border Patrol, maybe because it was a Mexican bus originating in Tijuana. The agents collected all non-US documents (mostly Mexican passports) and took them out for scanning.

When they got to the person in question, they were stunned at her ID; she said it was Finland's equivalent of the US passport card, that her passport book had been stolen, and that she could show them her passport copy and admission record (I-94). They said they could look up the I-94 "but needed the passport", so she simply wrote down on a piece of paper her passport number and admission number (both of which she knew by heart).

They then asked what status she was on, to which she said "VWP", and finally they suspiciously said "and...how are you going to get home like this?" whereby she said her ID was good enough for that. They then took it and the info paper with the other documents, and returned after 15-20 minutes with no further issues.

The person told me that about 5 people were thrown off the vehicle and didn't get back on.

Moral of the story: you can probably get by without an original passport, but it's not recommended to try except in situations like this

Crazydre
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