CBP August 2021 Operational Update

By Brandon French, Associate, Braumiller Law Group

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP” or “Customs”) recently released its August 2021 operational statistics. These statistics are important for CBP to review monthly/yearly to better understand and ensure enforcement efforts continue to improve. Within this release, there were a number of interesting statistics provided by Customs. Here is a summary of the some of the different enforcement numbers from August 2021:

Southern Border: There were over 200,000 encounters at the border which led to expulsion. Nearly half of encounters were single adults, with 103,129 encounters in August, a 7 percent decrease compared to July. A total of 1,002,722 unique individuals have been encountered year-to-date during Fiscal Year 2021, compared to 851,513 during the same time period in Fiscal Year 2019.

International Trade/Travel: CBP’s trade and travel numbers have significantly increased in recent months. For example, between March and August, air travel increased 208.43%, passenger vehicle travel increased by 28.64%, pedestrian travel increased by 34.30%, and commercial truck travel increased by 17.13%.
Facial Biometrics: CBP is putting an increased emphasis on facial biometrics. To date, more than 96 million travelers have participated in the biometric facial comparison process at different ports of entry. Since September 2018, CBP has utilized facial biometrics to prevent over 900 imposters from illegally entering the United States by using valid travel documents that were issued to other individuals.
Trade Seizures: In Fiscal Year 2021 to date, CBP has processed approximately $2.6 trillion of imports, an increase of nearly 15 percent compared to the same period in Fiscal Year 2020. CBP has also seized 77,416 shipments for trade violations in the current fiscal year. In August alone, CBP processed more than 3 million entry summaries valued at more than $262 billion, identifying estimated duties of nearly $8.5 billion to be collected by the U.S. government.
Drug Seizures: Cocaine seizures increased 32 percent; Methamphetamine seizures increased 13 percent; Heroin seizures decreased 36 percent; Fentanyl seizures increased 34 percent.
Forced Labor: Customs continues to closely investigate imported merchandise made by forced labor. In Fiscal Year 2021 to date, CBP has detained 1,213 shipments that contained approximately $414 million of goods suspected to be made by forced labor.

For a complete outline of the August 2021 operational statistics, see https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-releases-august-2021-operational-update and https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics.

For any additional inquiries, or if you would like to discuss the August 2021 operational update in more detail, please contact Brandon at [email protected].