I had the same thing happen in 2006. No one took it out. I ripped it out and put it in the bin. In 2008 on my return trip to the USA. No problems encountered. Again in 2009 no problems.
Well... I've had this come off the rails. Several years back I arrived on an early morning flight into LAX, feeling the usual level of wonderful. At Immigration, the arrivals agent got half way through the process, but then asked me if I would go to "secondary immigration" to sort out an irregularity. At Bradley, that's a room just off the carousel area.
In secondary immigration, an agent spent the next hour looking at my passport, looking at me, tapping at the terminal, moving back and forth to a printer, eating donuts (note: he didn't offer me any) and further tapping at a terminal. After a long while, the questions started:
- did I remember leaving the US without surrendering the green bit
- had I flown out of Miami without surrendering the green bit
- where was passport number xx_xx (eventually determined to be my old passport)
- did I have any way of getting that passport
- etc.
This was pretty bizarre, because I certainly
had exited from Miami - but some 8 years previously. Subsequently I had entered and exited the US a very large number of times from LAX, MIA, and many other ports on that same passport. But - no surprise - the now-expired passport was at home in Sydney. So I'm standing there wondering what could have happened to their systems to ping me years later, even though the old and new passports had been seen any number of times by US immigration without triggering any entry issues... until that day.
I should add that the MIA exit was pre-9/11; I was in the US during 9/11, and had gone in/out many times post 9/11. So much for heightened screening.
When it became clear that, for some reason the system had finally matched the green bit against my new passport, the agent was happy. We obviously couldn't do anything about finding the card, my old passport wasn't producable, and there was no reason to detain me further. He apologised for the delay, and it was all very friendly. I can't complain about anything except the time it took, and his failure to offer me a donut.
In a further bizarreness, all this happened many years AFTER I had been issued with a trial Portpass card, meaning that they had completely cleared me for rapid immigration and captured my iris, fingers and several other body parts as scannable ID.
As a parting statement, Agent Secondary apologised profusely for the process, and told me that this was likely to happen every time I came into the US from then on, because there was no way that he could override the flag.
That was maybe six years ago, and it's never happened again. Go figure.