The Division of Homeland Safety introduced Monday that it’s extending the deadline to require Actual ID-compliant identification for air vacationers, pushing the beginning date from Might 3, 2023, to Might 7, 2025.
The extension will give states extra time to make sure residents have driver’s licenses and identification playing cards that adjust to enhanced safety requirements underneath the Actual ID Act. Efforts to supply these IDs have been “considerably hindered by state driver’s licensing companies having to work by way of the backlogs created by the pandemic,” DHS mentioned in a press launch.
The deadline for the brand new IDs has already been prolonged beforehand. Whereas time extensions up to now had been attributable to an absence of full state compliance with the necessities for issuing the safer driver’s licenses, the deadline was beforehand pushed from October 2021 to this coming Might, officers mentioned on the time, as a result of the pandemic had made it more durable for folks to get into state motorcar departments to acquire the brand new identifications.
When the enforcement deadline lastly begins in spring of 2015, the Transportation Safety Administration will now not be capable to settle for non-compliant identifications from vacationers ages 18 or older for home flights, the division mentioned.
DHS is working with states to satisfy the necessities and “Can even use this time to implement improvements to make the method extra environment friendly and accessible,” Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas mentioned within the launch.
Congress handed the brand new requirements as a part of the Actual ID Act in 2005, based mostly on a advice of the 9/11 Fee. The improved safety requirements for state-issued identification playing cards and driver’s licenses goal to make IDs more durable to counterfeit and permit information checks.
