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Here is my situation: My daughter is a US citizen born in Guatemala. My family is traveling in a couple of weeks to Guatemala for the service of my grandmother, who died of COVID last November. She applied to renew her US passport back in April, but they sent it back unprocessed a couple of weeks ago because she used the wrong form (she needed to use the DS-11 because her last passport was issued when she was 14).

She can't get an appointment at a passport agency before the trip in November. She has tried multiple times, but they are all booked up. She can try for an emergency appointment three days before she leaves, but I'm not counting on that since it is not really an emergency. What about this idea? She redoes her US passport application expedited (6 weeks turnaround) in the US. She doesn't wait for it, but travels in two weeks to Guatemala on her Guatemalan passport with the rest of the family. Once her US passport is done (early August), I have it overnighted to her in Guatemala and she returns with it. Would that work?

I know she is not supposed to leave the US without her US passport in hand, but would anyone know? Stop her? I thought about simply having her get a new passport issued to her at the US consulate in Guatemala, but it looks like that would take a long time. She can't exactly tell them her passport was stolen. She would have to admit she came down without it, which probably means they would expedite it, and appointments seem hard to get there too.

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    When did your daughter's US passport expire? If it is still valid, when will it expire? Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 16:22
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    What @DavidSupportsMonica could be alluding to is that you can return to the US on an expired passport if it expires while you are out of the US. See #34 of the General Questions section of travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/passport-help/…
    – Peter M
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 16:49
  • It expired in 2019 so returning with the expired passport is not an option. We're going to call the US consulate tomorrow (they are closed today for a Guate holiday) to see what turn around time is on ordinary US passport issuance is in Guatemala. I imagine they would not approve what my daughter wants to do (arrive in country with no valid US passport) but that doesn't mean she can't do it. Just trying to figure what might be best and what might go wrong.
    – Magda E
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 18:02
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    Review the answers and comments to this Travel.SE question. The chances of being blocked by CBP are extremely small, but the consequences can include having your daughter prevented at the very last moment from boarding the flight to Guatemala. I do not know if flights to Guatemala are targeted by CBP for inspection. Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 19:19
  • "She can try for an emergency appointment three days before she leaves, but I'm not counting on that since it is not really an emergency": all you need is proof that you're traveling within a few days. They don't go into the reason for the travel. What happened in the end?
    – phoog
    Commented Jan 28, 2023 at 21:02

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