Story Archive

It’s a Foreign Country

“I don’t know if we can accept these,” Ashley Brandt says a Transportation Security Administration agent in Phoenix, Ariz., told her. The identification she had presented at airport security was a driver’s license, but it wasn’t issued by a U.S. state, and that, the agent thought, might be a problem. “Do you have a U.S. passport?” Brandt says the agent yelled to a supervisor in another security line, and the supervisor said yes, driver’s licenses issued by Washington, D.C., qualify, even though the capital of the United States is not itself a state. Brandt’s boyfriend tweeted the story, it went viral, and Guam and Puerto Rico residents began sharing similar stories. A TSA spokeswoman responded to a reporter’s inquiry by pointing out the agency’s website, which lists valid forms of I.D., including “state photo identity cards.” (AC/Washington Post) ...Problem not solved.