At Denver International Airport, Customs and Border Protection officials expected no passport problems Tuesday, the first day of a new federal regulation requiring all travelers to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean to present a U.S. passport.
Previously travelers to these regions were allowed to fly with a valid driver’s license and a birth certificate. People returning to the U.S. who left the country before Tuesday are being allowed to re-enter without hassle, said Bruce Murley, port director for Customs and Border Protection at DIA.
“This is more of an informational period,” he said. “Travelers who don’t have passports are being given a flier and told the new requirements are in effect and for future travel anywhere outside the U.S. they are going to need one of the approved forms of documentation.”
Passport applications are also available for travelers returning from other countries. “We are not expecting any problems, close to 90 percent of air travelers already have passports,” Murley said.
On the front end, airlines are making sure travelers have passports. Most have been warning passengers for months that they would need a passport for travel to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean in January.
Frontier Airlines contacted people who booked trips to countries affected by the new passport rules to make sure they were prepared to travel with passports.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it misspelled the name of Bruce Murley, port director at Denver International Airport.
