International Travel 2019

🇫🇷 A postcard from France 🇫🇷
Bonjour à tous! I just arrived in France yesterday at CDG Airport. I have an IML-notification U.S. Passport, but the French border control officer did not flip to the special notice page. She barely glanced at my passport and didn’t even look up to see if the person handing her the passport was the same as the one in the passport photo!
(I guess Angel Watch’s “URGENT PRIORITY; HIGH IMPORTANCE” notice was unimportant to the French Border Police.)
🇫🇷 Vive la France! Vive la république! 🇫🇷

Everything went very very smoothly.

A month before leaving I called the head of the Illinois State Police SOR Unit Tracy Morgan (217/785-0653) and asked her what to do, since my local police department in Chicago refused to take a notification more than three days before leaving, the officer saying that he had never heard of the 21-day notice required by IML. Morgan told me that the 21-day notice is “not the law” in non-SORNA compliant Illinois and that I was to follow the Illinois regulation of three days in advance notice. She assured me that no one from Illinois who does this has ever had any problem with federal marshals, etc.

I did exactly that, boarded the plane for Portugal, breezed through customs in Porto, traveled back to O’hare airport, where I got the expected X on my passport scan, but had a very light questioning (“Where are you traveling from”) and made it to baggage claim before my bags came out. Also, no baggage search: officer at that desk asked my social number, and replied go out that door and have a nice day.

(Are they getting easier, or was I just lucky?)

I will now return to local police (within three days of arriving home) and change address from Portugal to my home in Chicago.

I’m not giving advice to anyone, just reporting what happened to me. At any rate this process is specific to Illinois, and I have no idea if it also applies to other non-SORNA states.

I’m now very encouraged about returning to Europe which seems to be easy peasy, and am planning a trip with my wife to Norway next summer.

I only asked about Vietnam for very future planning. I know it’s a long shot and I certainly don’t want to take a 14-hour flight and be turned away. I’ll probably stick to Schengen countries — many beautiful and welcoming places to go.

I wonder when this IML and traveling stuff will be challenged? I am fed up with us not getting our day in court when ACLU rushes and helps illegals knowingly crossing into US daily.

We just returned from a 17 day trip through the Balkan area of Eastern Europe. We flew Turkish Airlines from SFO to Istanbul, changed planes in the International Transfer area of the new huge airport there, and flew on to Athens, Greece. There were no issues with any of this (I posted this earlier). After a day visiting Athens by walking around and using the Metro, we joined a tour group for a bus tour of this part of Europe. Our first border crossing was in to North Macedonia. When we arrived at the border, the tour leader went through the bus collecting everyone’s passport, which she then turned over to the border agents to process while we stayed on the bus. About 15 minutes later, a border officer emerged from his office holding one passport, and walked over to our bus. I figured now it all begins. I pictured myself being led off the bus and at least being interviewed, and at most being told that I couldn’t enter the country. But lo and behold, it wasn’t me, but another passenger who was hauled off the bus and questioned for about half an hour, and then was allowed to return to the bus. The tour leader announced that there was some issue with his passport (from somewhere in South America, I think) but that it was resolved. A little while later, the tour leader came back on the bus with everyone’s passport, returned them all to us, and the bus headed into North Macedonia.

We proceeded to visit nine more countries, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria, before returning to Greece. We knew Croatia wouldn’t be a problem from the excellent reports from Steve, and we knew Slovenia and Hungary wouldn’t be a problem because they are both Schengen and we had been to both of them before. But the bottom line is, we had no problems anywhere!

Every border crossing was a different experience. Most of the time, our passports were gathered, taken into the customs office and then returned to us while we waited on the bus. Sometimes we had to go through this process when leaving a country, drive a couple of hundred yards, and repeat the process to enter the new country. Sometimes we all had to get off the bus and walk through the customs office to have our passports scanned. A couple of times, the officials for the two countries were sharing the office, so we handed our passports to the first official, who scanned them and then stamped them, and then we handed our passports to the person sitting next to him, who scanned them and stamped them for the new country we were entering. In the case of Croatia, we had to leave the country and then re-enter the country (as Steve described in an earlier post), and between Slovenia and Hungary, we didn’t even have to stop – just drove right across the border because they are both Schengen.

Bottom line, we had no issues traveling from country to country on the bus. It was a bit disconcerting having our passports taken away and then returned later, but it was a non-issue. Also, some of the hotels we stayed in wanted to scan our passports, and a couple of times we had to leave them with the front desk and then pick them up later.

Of course I can’t speak for the times when I was not in possession of my passport, but in all the times I watched my passport being scanned and stamped, I never saw anyone look at the marked page in the back of my passport. And when the passport was scanned, I’m guessing that the scanner was just making a copy of the page, as opposed to reading some code or RFID that might identify me in some manner.

On our way back, we decided to push our luck a little bit. We learned that Turkish Airlines offers free tours of Istanbul to customers with a layover of 6 hours or more. Turns out, we had a layover of 5 hours and 55 minutes, so we decided we would go for it. Visas were required, so we applied online, and we were immediately granted Visas. We flew into Istanbul, and headed for passport control. The website said that the passport control people would know that we had visas, but it turns out they didn’t, so we had to bring up our Visas on our cellphone screens and show the agent. He copied down the information and let us pass into Turkey. The new airport is so large that it took us over half an hour to find the place where we could sign up for a tour, but we made it just in time. We boarded a bus with a tour guide and drove into Istanbul, which was about a 40 minute drive from the airport. We spent about 3 hours driving and walking around Istanbul, taking lots of pictures, and eating in a little café next to a huge mosque, before we had to get back to the bus to get back to the airport for our flight back to SFO.

When I filled out my 21 day advance notice of travel, I didn’t mention anything about Turkey, because I assumed we would just be transferring through the airport, so I guess that would be one of those last minute unscheduled events that we should be able to get away with. That said, I have still never been asked anything about whether I gave the notice when I’ve re-entered the U.S. Of course, scanning my passport when I arrived at SFO, set off the usual alarm, but the agent didn’t seem too concerned. He handed my passport to another agent, telling him he wasn’t sure what the problem was. That agent said, “I don’t know why your passport was flagged, but let me save you a couple of hours.” So he followed us to baggage claim, and after we grabbed our bags, he had us follow him to a little table area, where he proceeded to search our bags, zip them back up, and told us to have a safe trip home. He was quite friendly, and even asked us about our trip and what places we liked best, etc. while he was searching. I wish all returns to the U.S. were this pleasant.

In conclusion, and after visiting about 17 countries since getting it, the marked passport currently has no effect on travel, subject to change, of course. Also, I doubt that any country that is not electronically connected to the U.S. database is going to deny entry to us unless they receive the “WARNING WARNING” letter from Satan Watch. On the other hand, any of the countries I have entered with no problem could have a different attitude if one of those damn letters were to precede my visit. When I was turned away from Thailand, they met me coming off of the plane with the letter in their hands. They never even bothered to look at my passport.

@NY won’t let go

“Just got my new passport from the embassy . Didn’t look at it until I got back just now.
Checked every page twice. There is no marker ”

I would think that in your case that is a good thing. Since you don’t fly into or out of the U.S., you’ll probably stay off the radar. But who really knows in this crazy disorganized system that the Satan Watch people like to play games with.

@NY won’t let go…very sensible and common sense decision by the court. I had to cringe when the state tried to play the “alarming high rate of recidivism” card. They just won’t let that one die even though everyone knows the truth.

Anyone travel to Germany recently?

❓❓❓ Curious about your international travel experiences? 🤔 Submit FOIA Requests to:
1. U.S. Dept. of Justice (DOJ runs Angel Watch and the U.S. Marshals Service) and,
2. U.S. Department of State (they are in charge of U.S. Passports).
It took about 7 months, many follow-up emails, and the involvement of my Congress person’s office, but I finally got my FOIA Requests answered. AND Angel Watch was sending inaccurate information about me, mistating that my conviction (now almost 25 years ago) was much more recent. And the notifications they send about me state “Priority: Urgent” and “Important: High”.

I encourage everyone to submit FOIA Requests. If for no other reasons, it harrasses our harrassers(!) and forces them to waste time and staff answering our requests. (I have also filed a FOIA Request with my local police department because I wanted to know what their records about me indicated.)

Steven Whitsett was absolutely correct! Everybody just wants to hide in the shadows and hope for laws to change. The truth is that they will NOT change unless we come out of hiding to do something about it. They are not going to change if we do not have the courage to stand up and speak.

I know that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and therefore there is no risk of being turned away. According to the spreadsheet provided here on this website, the registration rule is:

3 business days for initial registration and updates. §536c. Residence defined as “the location of a person’s home or the place where the person habitually lives.” §536(13). Those convicted in other jurisdictions “in Puerto Rico by reasons of work or study” required to register w/in 3 calendar days after arrival, “even if such offender does not intend to establish a residence.” §536c. No provision made for visitors.

That last sentence…no provision made for visitors. So if I decide to go for 7 days, I’m not required to register? I’m not going to work there. I’m not going to study. I also have an expunged record so therefore no conviction.

Has anyone taken a trip to Puerto Rico that was 4 or more days? Did you register?