U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued CSMS #11-000216 stating that the introduction of ACE M1 will require all brokers participating in Rail Line Release to have Entry Banks created in ACE. The ACE Entry Bank numbers must be unique and cannot overlap with the ACS Entry Bank numbers. All Entry Banks must be created in the ACE Portal no later than Friday, 9/23/11.For more information on how to create and maintain Entry Banks in the ACE Portal, please refer to the User Guide distributed in CSMS #11-000208.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is announcing that the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (COAC) will meet on October 4, 2011 in El Paso, TX from 1 pm to 6 pm.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a document on in-bond authorization for rail and sea carriers in ACE since the deployment of ACE e-Manifest: Rail and Sea (M1). The document provides instructions on how to create and maintain a carrier in-bond authorization, grant additional port access to an existing authorized partner, edit date parameters for authorized partners, remove ports from an authorized partner, and remove authorized partners from an account in ACE.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sources state that September 18th will be the last "print date" for paper courtesy notices of liquidation for importers of record whose entry summaries are filed in ABI. These entry summaries will have a September 30 liquidation date. For all entry summaries scheduled for liquidation after September 30, importers using agents to file in ABI must obtain their liquidation information from their ACE Portal Accounts or Customs broker.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing recent changes in Harmonized System Update 1105. This update contains 26,044 Automated Broker Interface records and 4,703 harmonized tariff records.
Sources at U.S Customs and Border Protection state that importers that get new importer of record (IOR) numbers (either for the first time, or replacing an old IOR)1 may get additional scrutiny from Customs officials.
On September 7, 2011, the Senate Appropriations Committee amended, approved, and reported the fiscal year 2012 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill (H.R. 2017), which would provide $410 million more for CBP than was enacted in FY 2011, including funds for cargo scanning pilots. In its report, the Committee urges CBP to encourage or require brokers to develop “know your customer” programs, consider a U.S. agent requirement for foreign importers, etc.
19 CFR 103.31(d) allows an importer or consignee to request confidential treatment for its name and address in inward manifests, as well as the name and address of its shippers. Shippers are allowed to request confidential treatment for its name and address in outward manifests. Such certifications must be filed every two years to remain in place.
Officials at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have made available a “Lacey Act Updates” presentation, which provides an overview of the 2008 Lacey Act Amendments, and what the agency views as the challenges and common problems in completing the Lacey Declaration (PPQ 505) for imported plants and plant products.1
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.