U.S. Customs Inspections

As director of Customs San Diego District, I believe it is my duty to the taxpayers to attempt to correct the misleading information provided in your article “Tougher Times Loom at the Border” (April 12). You presented a distorted story, filled with outdated information. Reporter G.H. Reza was afforded two opportunities to tour Customs cargo facilities at Otay Mesa to learn about our latest efforts there, but chose instead to focus on stale material that is three to four years old.

To an outsider who has not availed himself of the most expert guidance, it may seem that most inspections are cursory at best and that thorough inspections are rare. In today’s environment we must work smarter to target the shipments that are likely to produce results and help us fulfill our mission.

Today, we are performing more high-quality examinations of cargo than ever before. We are devoting our resources to areas that have enabled us to achieve success while facilitating the entry of merchandise that is legitimate. When we perform an examination of a truck and its cargo, we meet requirements necessary to ensure that the time spent and the completed inspection determine with high probability that if drugs are present, they will be found. “Tailgate” inspections are a thing of the past. Compromising quality inspections for less thorough examinations of greater numbers of trucks that do not yield results would be a waste of the taxpayers’ as well as importers’ money.

In selecting the trucks that will undergo thorough examinations and deciding how to allocate our resources, we put to use a variety of technology, methods and programs. Our automated systems assist us in deciding which targets are appropriate for examination. They allow our inspectors, agents, import specialists and intelligence analysts to contribute and utilize concrete information to make wise decisions and thereby work smart.

We have made great strides in working closely with the brokerage and importing community. Since these businesses have a great interest in facilitating legitimate cross-border commerce and weeding out the smugglers, the partnership between Customs and business has contributed enormously to our ability to target effectively. This relationship must continue.

Finally, our inspectors are afforded the best technology to accomplish the quality examinations that we require. X-ray machines, fiber optics scopes, density anomaly detectors, elevated platforms, as well as “low-tech” items such as hammers and drills, make us infinitely more capable of detecting narcotics than we were three or four years ago.

Your article intimated that the use of narcotic detector dogs is ineffective. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our canine program is internationally recognized for its excellence, having received the Commissioner of Customs Citation in the past fiscal year for its record-breaking contributions to Customs mission.

Our narcotics interdictions have risen dramatically over the past two years. It is hard to quarrel effectively with this success, yet your article attempted to do even that by using a highly dubious and speculative argument that we only interdict 10% of the drugs entering the country. This is an entirely ambiguous guess containing absolutely no substantiation in fact and presents a totally unfair depiction of our efforts and our successes.

International trade has increased enormously in the past decades and will continue to increase. We have prepared for that in many ways, added personnel, new facilities, new programs, new technologies and new methodologies.

RUDY M. CAMACHO, District Director

U.S. Customs Service, San Diego