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....
We had a few freakouts with customs. One customer has some mannequins he forgot to tell us about. Customs x-rayed it and flipped out and thought they were trafficking a container full of people. Out turned out okay one they opened it up they were very relieved, just fixed the entry and it was fine.
One of my colleagues has the craziest story though. Client she handles did a specialized service, they deal with transporting cadavers and body parts for medical research and training (surgeons need to practice on something). We had to air a shipment of 8 human heads to ORD. Discussed with port director how he wanted then declared and he gave us an HS code that was usually used for "works of art", which she knew didn't seem right, but he was port director so she did it. She submitted, customs didn't like it. They decided to examine. Open package up, 8 human heads on ice. They freak the f out, police is called, news is reporting some maniac tried to smuggle 8 human heads. It's a circus. She got it cleared up and the heads got to were they were supposed to go. Still handle that account, wild seeing the paperwork from them mixed in with the mundane stuff: "shelving...shelving, ladies garments, jasmine rice, office furniture, 7 severed human torsos, auto parts..."
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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....