How Customs Screens for Prohibited Goods at U.S. Ports

At the seaport in Savannah, Ga., U.S. Customs and Border Protection Watch Commander James Long stands in a cavernous warehouse looking over rows of boxes unpacked from cargo containers and laid out across a concrete floor.

- DYLAN TOKAR

The boxes, some neatly packed and others bursting at the seams, contain everything from electric scooters to clothing and lamps. Long and his team must sift through them, looking for items that don't meet U.S. product safety standards or that violate intellectual property laws. Other teams screen agricultural products and search for drugs, guns and other contraband.

"We call it looking for the bugs and the thugs," Long says.

Long is a front-line enforcer of U.S. tariffs and trade laws, but some of the most important work conducted by his agency takes place under the fluorescent lights of a nearby laboratory.

A raft of new regulations, including a law banning goods made with forced labor in China, have customs officials and companies looking for ways to bring greater transparency to global supply lines.

To enforce the new rules, CBP is upgrading several of its labs, adding equipment and know-how that enable the agency to look into the atomic composition of materials for clues about their origin.

More than 2.5 million loaded containers, measured in 20-foot equivalent units, were imported through the Savannah port last year.