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Posted on Tue, Jun. 19, 2007

Need a US passport? Get in line

Six days before her trip to Trinidad and still without a passport, Shirley Slocum was desperate. So desperate that she stood in a line for 12 hours overnight.

Yet when the doors to the Miami Passport Agency opened at 8 a.m. Tuesday, she wasn't the only one there. She wasn't even the first one -- more than a dozen people were ahead of her.

Despite changes made two weeks ago to ease a major backlog in passport processing nationwide, getting one is still a messy waiting game. The Miami Passport Agency saw about 500 people on Tuesday alone, and others waiting in line were turned away.

The confusion stems from new security rules that required U.S. citizens to carry passports when traveling to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America as of January. Earlier this month, the government relaxed the rules to say travelers to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean could present proof of a passport application instead of a passport itself.

The changes have helped, said Ryan Dooley, assistant director of the Miami Passport Agency -- just a few weeks ago, the crowds were up to 1,000 daily. But the agency is still flooded with frantic summer travelers, many of whom -- even those with small children -- are spending the night on the street.

The L-shaped line Tuesday morning snaked around the Claude Pepper Federal Office Building, 51 SW First Ave. With few restaurants and restrooms in the area, several people said it had been a tough night.

It was the second day in line for Slocum, who waited sullenly near the front.

Slocum, of Miami, applied for a passport two months ago but never got it. She arrived at 5:30 a.m. Monday and was told to come back at night.

From 10 p.m. Monday until 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, she stood in line and waited. And waited. And waited.

''They made changes but [had] no manpower behind it, so now people have to suffer,'' Slocum said.

Dooley said his 100-person staff is supposed to expand by 20 percent soon, including 15 more passport specialists in the coming weeks. But not soon enough for Diana Hernandez-Canas, just a step ahead of Slocum.

Hernandez-Canas and her husband, who are leaving for Colombia on Thursday, traded shifts in line. He came at 7 p.m. Monday, friends subbed from 2 to 6 a.m., and she came at 6 a.m. with the kids, Alexandra, 6, and Andy, 10.

The children read books as the discomfort and morning heat set in.

''[Officials] told us they wouldn't let us in to use the restrooms, even at 7:30 a.m.,'' said Hernandez-Canas of Miami.

They were the lucky ones. Far behind them, in the middle of the line, Daphne Jean-Francois, 13, had waited with her mother, Yolanda, since 3:30 a.m. Crouched in a chair just outside the barricade line, the North Miami pair visited the passport agency Tuesday for the second time in two days. They needed documentation to leave Thursday for a funeral in Haiti.

Daphne shared her chair with Aishah Jean-Baptiste, 7, also going to Haiti with her parents.

''I'm thinking it's boring, and I want to go and take a nap,'' Aishah complained.

A little farther back, behind the yellow plastic barricades, Boca Raton doctor Mark Denker and his wife, Jeanette, were unprepared for the huge delay in getting passports for their two children for a Czech Republic trip. They made it to Miami by 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, hoping to get the passports in time to leave on Sunday.

They told the children -- Michael, 5, and Jacqueline, 6 -- it was a camping trip.

''We've been getting more desperate and desperate as we get close to our departure date,'' Denker said. ``So here we are now.''

By 10:40 a.m., the line that once wrapped around the block had shrunk to one side of the building. But families with small children still were there.

Ivania Caceres walked along the sidewalk with her 11-month-old baby, Camila Mairena. Her husband, Leiman Mairena, stood near the end of the line, trying to get a passport for the infant.

The couple have been planning to visit Caceres' mother in Nicaragua since before the baby's birth, and Caceres wants to make it by the baby's birthday on Sunday.

While Caceres fed the baby throughout the four hours of waiting in line, she said she hadn't thought much about herself and her husband.

''We've got this problem,'' she said. ``So we can't think about food right now.''