Trade community decries border-crossing plan.

Feinstein calls for heightened vehicle inspections

The Southland trade community is up in arms over U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's push to increase Customs' inspections of vehicles for illegal drugs at the U.S.-Mexico border and to revamp the agency's inspection system.

The California Democrat is wary that moves to speed passage of goods across the border will mean chugs go through easier. But more vehicle inspections would lead to traffic tie-ups at the San Diego border crossing, where many trucks are heading to L.A. County destinations, including Southland ports, trade experts said.

Feinstein, in a letter to President Clinton dated Feb. 5, stated that "as Customs focuses on facilitating cargo and passenger traffic with greater ease, they are doing so at the expense of drug interdiction efforts."

"Reports on a decline in seizures clearly indicates that programs designed to expedite trade, such as Line Release, may in fact be facilitating the flow of drugs across the border," the letter further stated. The Line Release program alerts inspectors to importers who are considered low risks of bringing in illegal shipments of drugs.

Feinstein is also calling for the resignation of Customs' top man, Commissioner George Weise, according to published reports.

The U.S. Customs Service, meanwhile, issued a statement Feb. 26 announcing that one of its anti-drug-smuggling plans, Operation Hard Line, resulted in a 24-percent increase in seizures of cocaine, heroin and marijuana in 1995, compared with 1994. Customs officials declined to make further comments on the issue.

However, Weise sent a letter dated Feb. 6 to all Customs employees stating, "drug interdiction is a Customs objective second to none. And I want all of our people directly involved in the interdiction effort to give nothing less than 100 percent."

Limited resources

Southland trade experts said Customs has only a limited amount of manpower, and the trade-expediting programs Feinstein is criticizing make the most efficient use of that manpower.

Under the Line Release program, importers are pre-screened to ensure they meet certain qualifications, such as a history of complying with the law, said Susan Kohn Ross, a trade attorney with the L.A.-based law firm Ross & Associates.

Such companies' documents are marked so inspectors know they are low-risk importers. When crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, vehicles of such companies wait in the same lines as other importers', and they are still subject to inspections. However, Customs inspectors might focus less on low-risk importers' vehicles, Ross said.

Somehow, Feinstein has interpreted the Line Release program to mean that these importers aren't subject to inspections at all, Ross said.

"We think Line Release has been an innovative program," added Jay Winter, executive secretary of the Foreign Trade Association of Southern California. Under it, Customs looks for importers that are most likely to be transporting drugs, he said.

"Customs doesn't have the manpower to do a bunch of inspections and not get a return from (those inspections)," Ross added.

Guy Fox - chairman of Global Transportation Services Inc., a Redondo Beach-based customs broker and freight forwarder - stated in a Feb. 21 letter to Feinstein: "It is important to understand that all cargo arriving into the United States can not possibly be examined for drugs. If this were the case, the docks and staging yards at the harbor would be completely backed up in the harbor waiting for discharge."

Time is of the essence 

Many companies these days use "just-in-time" ordering procedures to keep inventory at optimal levels. This means supplies are ordered to arrive just as they are needed, rather than far in advance and then stored in a warehouse for future use. As a result, timeliness of deliveries has become crucial, Ross said.

If Customs is required to make more vehicle inspections, it needs a bigger staff to do it, she said.

Furthermore, any new drug-interdiction programs implemented at the U.S.-Mexico border would have to be implemented at borders, ports and airports across the country to ensure that Customs' strategy is uniform, Fox said. "All commerce in the U.S. is going to be sitting on the docks waiting for examinations," he warned.

One reason for uniform rules is obvious. If the U.S.-Mexico border at San Diego is plugged up and drug traffickers can't get through there, they'll find another route to use to smuggle in drugs, Fox said.