For fellow Americans living in cities where ICE is active, many people, especially those of Hispanic descent, are already carrying around passports on their persons at all times because they’re rightfully afraid of being forcibly disappeared or deported to some random South American country.
A passport card can be obtained for $30 from the Department of State. It is considered exactly equivalent to a passport within the US, but it’s the size of a credit card. It is a valid travel document for land and sea travel within North America and the Caribbean. It also counts as a Real ID. The card is good for ten years.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/card.html
Do not do this if you are transgender or have an X gender marker. They will cancel your passport and tell you to apply for a new one with your sex assigned at birth.
Uh . . . how? I’m a trans man, but my passport says male. I changed it years ago. I have an active passport. Is there anything in this process that would get me flagged as a trans person?
They have a database of trans people. If you were ever issued a passport with an F gender marker, they would know you changed it.
If you try to renew, you’ll get the passport back with two holes punched in it with a letter telling you to apply again with an F gender marker.
Edit: Some transgender people have been issued the passport anyway with the gender they were assigned at birth. This causes problems because your appearance would not match the gender stated on the passport and thus would subject you to additional scrutiny at checkpoints. That’s not even mentioning the countries where being transgender is just illegal, although I don’t imagine you have many plans to visit those places.
Fuckin’ gross.
So for every person who submits for a renewal or new passport, they are crosschecking records to try to catch “the trannies”.