CBP announced that as of June 30, 2022, U.S. citizens with expired passports will no longer be allowed to return to the United States. U.S. citizens will be required to contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to apply for U.S. passport renewal.
Throughout the Covid crisis, the U.S. Government allowed Americans who had been stuck abroad indefinitely, and whose passports might have ceased being valid amid the never-ending cycle of restrictions, to travel back home on an expired document.
On May 28, 2021, December 21, 2021, and March 23, 2022, guidance was issued permitting U.S. citizens to use their expired U.S. passports, whose passport expired on or after Jan. 1, 2020, to return to the U.S. through June 30, 2022.
If a U.S. citizen overseas presents an expired U.S. passport to board a flight into the U.S., airlines will advise traveler to contact their nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate to apply for a U.S. passport. Americans are eligible for ‘temporary passports’ in cases of emergency travel.
Prior this rule, all U.S. citizens qualified for travel to the United States on an expired passport, so long as the flight back was a ‘direct return’, or included a short-term, air-side transit in a foreign country. U.S. authorities only required that the document had previously valid for a total of 10 years, from the date of issue, before expiring.