Advance Parole

Hello everyone, this site has always helped me with immigration stuff and wanted to share my recent experience. My friend is a TPS holder from El Salvador (ES). She applied for AP right after they said they were terminating TPS for ES. We were not sure if they would approve her application as they had already decided to terminate but they did. AP came with condition that she could only travel for Humanitarian or significant public benefit. She has families in Panama so we flew out on November 21st, 2018. Everything went smooth.

2 days before we were coming back to the US, we decided to check her arrival/departure records (just out of curiosity) and we were shocked. It said she had traveled 3 times in and out of the country and also said that she left the country last year from an unknown location and never returned. She has never been out of the country since she first came. We panicked. We started reading a lot of threads and what not and they all said "you should get that straight before you travel, you should go see a CBP officer before leaving the country etc". The problem was that we were already out of the country. We printed 2 years worth of her pay-stubs thinking we could show that to prove that she never left the country.

We went to the airport early and as always the person checking in the luggage had never seen a AP. It took about 20 minutes for her to verify everything, talk to her supervisor, make a copy etc. After that we were through everything all the way to the plane with no problem. We flew from Panama City to Atlanta on November 27. I have always heard that ATL airport was busy and immigration takes forever. We had a 3 hour connection. We went to the immigration line and the greeter asked if we were a family. We said just friends and they put us in different lines to see different officers. The lines were really short. I am a US Citizen so mine went through quick. The officer took a picture of my friend and had her fingerprints taken. My friend said she just asked where she was coming from and if she was bringing anything. Then they put her passport and AP in a yellow bag and escorted her to a room. I was nervous, especially after we discovered the error in arrival departure records. They told me to go wait downstairs by the luggage as I was not allowed to wait there with my friend. I kept looking at the escalator and had so many scary thoughts going through my head "was this a mistake? Should she have never traveled?" 20 minutes later she comes out all happy. She said they did not even ask her what she was doing in Panama. The officer was really nice and he asked her about the weather in Panama and how he plans to visit the country in the near future.

So even with a history showing she left the country at numerous times, my friend was paroled and it says until September 2019 (which is when her TPS is set to expire). This also means she is now eligible to adjust her status in the US through her spouse. Several of my friends (DACA, AOS, TPS) have traveled with AP and came back without any problems. They all say "it is not as scary as people make it seem". Thanks everyone.