A month from today — on May 7 — Texans will need a star on their driver's license to use it for boarding domestic flights or entering secure federal facilities.
The star in the upper-right corner means the license complies with the REAL ID Act. Congress passed the law in 2005 after a commission investigating the 9/11 attacks urged stricter national standards for state-issued IDs like driver's licenses.
Twenty years later, adoption of REAL ID is lagging. Millions of Americans are still carrying noncompliant driver's licenses. The federal government knows this and is bracing for public confusion on May 7.
"If the administration does go ahead with imposing this deadline, it's going to lead to chaos in airports in many states, and that may include Texas," Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said. "It doesn't take many people to slow down security lines."
As of March, 98% of driver's licenses and IDs issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) are REAL ID-compliant. Texas started issuing the IDs in October 2016, and most driver permits expire after eight years.
Other states are much further behind.
Nationwide compliance will be around 61% on May 7, according to an estimate by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS admitted in a federal rule published in January that sudden enforcement could cause "long lines, confusion, and frustrated travelers" at security checkpoints.
DHS says if lots of people show up at TSA screening with noncompliant IDs, it could lead to missed flights and — ironically — "greatly increase security risks both to passengers and TSA personnel" by distracting officers from those who may pose an actual risk.
That's why DHS and the Transportation Security Administration adopted a rule in January that allows federal agencies to phase in enforcement over the next two years. TSA can continue accepting non-REAL ID licenses after May 7 — at least temporarily — as long as travelers go through extra screening.
But that extra screening won't be smooth or predictable.
TSA spokesperson Patricia Mancha told KUT News the process would be similar to what happens now when someone arrives without any ID at all.
"There's a series of questions," she said. "They may have other documentation that can be used. I can't tell you for law enforcement reasons specifically what those questions are. What I can tell you is that the individual will be the one responsible for providing that information about themselves."
REAL ID faced resistance from the start. Many states, including Texas, initially cited concerns about privacy and the cost of compliance. DHS originally believed the roll out would cost up to $23 billion nationwide. The estimate was later downsized. Some state lawmakers attempted unsuccessfully in 2009 to block adoption of the national standards.
The law requires states share with other states all the information on a driver's license, including the photo, and the person's history of driving infractions. Privacy advocates feared the data-sharing system could lead to its eventual use in a wider range of transactions, effectively creating a de facto national database.
The Texas Republican Party platform for years even called for repeal of the REAL ID Act.
But Texas eventually came on board, spending millions to change identity-verification processes, upgrade security at driver's license offices, establish state-to-state information sharing and comply with other unfunded mandates of the federal law.
State lawmakers are now considering whether to adopt a resolution asking Congress to let U.S. citizens use REAL ID cards like a passport to re-enter the country.
Critics from both ends of the political spectrum still say the law goes too far.
"It helps to put us on the road essentially to giving the government the ability to monitor where and when you travel, how you travel, all those kinds of things," said Patrick Eddington, a former CIA analyst who's now a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. "That puts us in sort of a Soviet Union 'papers please'-like environment."
"We're almost 25 years after the 9/11 attacks. It's way past time to take a fresh look at all these things and whether or not they actually make sense," he said.
"It helps to put us on the road essentially to giving the government the ability to monitor where and when you travel, how you travel, all those kinds of things."
Stanley at the ACLU worries about what comes next. He said REAL ID paves the way for digital licenses stored on smartphones, which could be used to track people online and in daily life.
"Now you've got a super cookie that is a DMV-vetted, cryptographically secure digital prison, that once you share with a website, you can never take back. They will always know who you are for the rest of your life," Stanley said. "That basically means that there's a bird's eye view of everywhere that you're going and everywhere that you're using your ID, which is potentially a really invasive set of information."
Undocumented immigrants in Texas are left out entirely. Since state law bars them from getting a driver's license, there's no way for them to get a REAL ID-compliant one, either.
For everyone else, the advice is simple: Check your ID and look for the star.
"It's been a long time coming, and we've been working to try to make sure that travelers have that opportunity to get their document," Mancha with the TSA said. "Anyone who's had to renew a driver's license recently knows that it's not an immediate process."
New residents to Texas or those with expired driver's licenses may find it hard to get an appointment at a DPS office.
Some DPS offices in Central Texas are booked out more than a month. But about 30% of people miss their appointments — that means if you're willing to wait on standby, you might get served that day.
The real uncertainty may not be at DPS, but at TSA screening. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has for years occasionally struggled with lines so long they stretch outside the terminal.
So while most Texans are ready, millions of Americans are not — and on May 7, REAL ID could be in for a bumpy landing.
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