No exit recorded on ESTA

hugheskevi

I had a USA ESTA that expired on 15th July 2024. I entered the USA on 8th September 2022 and exited on 2nd November 2022. My exit was from El Paso into Ciudad Juarez, walking across the bridge to exit the USA and enter Mexico, and I then continued south through Mexico and have not returned to the USA since 2nd November 2022.

As the USA does not record exits on that border, my I94 record shows:

• 8th Sep 2022 - entered USA (at Anchorage, via Seattle airport transit, departing from Dublin)
• 21st Sep 2022 - exited USA (into Canada)
• 25th Sep 2022 - entered USA (from Canada)

From other threads, I understand that the next time I apply for an ESTA it will probably be refused due to overstaying a previous ESTA. The other circumstances I have seen involving not having a record of exit is with cruises, and in those circumstances travel agents sort it. But I traveled independently and exited on foot.

I have had extensive contact about this with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (cbpinfocenter@cbp.dhs.gov), who are quite frankly useless. They just respond with cut-and-paste answers that they think most closely match the circumstances rather than engaging with the issue - the responses often are to say things like here is how to check your I94 record when I had attached the I94 information to the email so obviously had already done that. It was a very long and tedious exchange with a lot of repetition and sending in the same things multiple times.

At first, they requested lots of information (passport, Mexico passport stamps, I94 record, etc) which I supplied, and they said it would be escalated and that I would get a response in about 30 working days. That didn't happen. When I engaged with them again they at first sent back a generic response not relevant to the situation, and when I replied to that they sent the same generic response to which they added "If you experience a denial when applying for ESTA in the future, please respond to this email."

I would prefer to get it all sorted before I next have a trip planned to the USA as from my experience to date they are woefully inefficient, so I am thinking the only route to resolve this will be to apply for an ESTA I do not currently need (not too keen on that, as I'll have to give false answers to questions about things like address whilst in USA and USA point of contact), receive a rejection, and then revert to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to get it sorted.

I was just wondering if anyone had previous experience with this, and if so how it was resolved?

jimi_man

I haven't had direct experience however you don't have to provide things like address and point of contact on the ESTA application. I did one a month or so ago and I left all those things blank (it says you can) mainly because I wasn't sure where or when I was going. (Went to Vegas for a few days in the end).