A travel document looks like a white passport. To reenter the United States, the resident possessing the travel document must present the original at the port of entry to the United States.

A Travel Document can refer to several different items, but it most commonly looks like a traditional passport booklet. If it is a "Refugee Travel Document" or an "Emergency Travel Document" (issued when a passport is lost), it is usually a slim, paper-based booklet with a durable blue, red, or green cover, containing roughly 8 to 12 pages for visas and stamps. It features a bio-data page with your photograph, name, and date of birth, similar to a standard passport, and often includes a machine-readable zone at the bottom. In the 2026 digital era, a "travel document" might also take the form of a Digital Travel Credential (DTC) stored on your smartphone, which looks like a high-security QR code or a digital ID card within a government-sanctioned app. If the term refers to a "Travel Authorization" (like an ESTA or ETIAS), it is simply a digital PDF or a line of text in a government database linked to your passport number. While physical booklets remain the "gold standard" for border crossings, the visual look of travel documentation is rapidly shifting toward sleek, biometric-enabled digital interfaces that can be scanned at e-gates.