DHS Enforcement Strategy to Increase Scrutiny on Textile Imports

On April 5, 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) outlined its strategy to combat illicit trade and level the playing field for the American textile industry.
The new enforcement plan focuses on the following actions:

  • Cracking down on small package shipments to prohibit illicit goods from U.S. markets by improving screening of packages claiming the Section 321 de minimis exemption for textile products, Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (“UFLPA”) compliance, and other violations, including expanded targeting, laboratory and isotopic testing, and focused enforcement operations.
  • Conducting joint U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Homeland Security Investigations (“CBP-HIS”) trade special operations to ensure cargo compliance. This includes physical inspections; country-of-origin, isotopic, and composition testing; and in-depth reviews of documentation. CBP will issue civil penalties for violations of U.S. laws and coordinate with HSI to develop and conduct criminal investigations when warranted.
  • Better assessing risk by expanding customs audits and increasing foreign verifications. DHS personnel will conduct comprehensive audits and textile production verification team visits to high-risk foreign facilities to ensure that textiles qualify under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA”) or the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (“CAFTA-DR”). CBP recently visited 31 facilities in Mexico – the first such visits under USMCA – as well as 18 facilities in Honduras and is on track to double the number of total foreign verification visits compared to last year.
  • Building stakeholder awareness by engaging in an education campaign to ensure that importers and suppliers in the CAFTA-DR and USMCA regions understand compliance requirements and are aware of CBP’s enforcement efforts.
  • Leveraging U.S. and Central American industry partnerships to improve facilitation for legitimate trade.
  • Expanding the UFLPA Entity List to identify malign suppliers for the trade community through review of additional entities in the high-priority textile sector for inclusion in the UFLPA Entity List.

Based on this new enforcement plan, importers in the textile and apparel industry should consider how these efforts could impact scrutiny of their import program. In particular, importers who purchase wearing apparel or any other textiles indirectly through a third party should validate the true source of the raw material to ensure that it complies with any free trade agreement rules of origin and that it does not have nexus to the Uyghur Region or any party on the UFLPA Entity List.

 

If you have any questions, please contact your local Noatum Logistics representative.