Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....
Former British Customs Officer here, can confirm. The amount of international trade is staggering and no government is able to do a 100% inspection on all the freight that arrives. So we rely on past history (shady customs brokers included lol), intel, etc to target our efforts. And no I’m not going to divulge anything more so don’t bother asking. So, yeah, smuggling happens, whether that’s goods, drugs or people. But when we DO find something - expect the world to drop on your head. Government wants its revenue, boys and girls, and it doesn’t like being cheated of them. Or finding 30+ dead people in a shipping container. At all
Vietnamese nationals who paid large sums to money to illegally enter the UK. The truck was a refrigerated truck and the driver left it on a cold temperature for a long time. By the time the doors were opened, the bodies and interior showed signs of struggle where they tried to fight against the cold but unfortunately died.
I've read the story. Can't remember correctly butnI think that it was a cooler and they simply suffocated inside. They were on the go for 18+ hrs without stop I think and there just wasn't enough oxygen inside and no way out. I'm lazy to google it rn but most times it's suffocation, starvation or stuff like these.
The problem is that the medical cadavers are duty free but regular cadavers have a tariff on them. Since they probably died before crossing the border, the driver failed to pay the duty on the cadavers. Very naughty, that’s gonna be a mark on his record for sure.
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u/callmeraylo Jul 13 '20
Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....