Customs and Border Protection. ICE is the largest investigative agency in the Department of Homeland Security and CBP II

COAC (Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee – a trade advisory committee that includes member of the trade community) has recently made recommendations for Customs and Border Protection. These provide more information on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act law and other enforcement regarding similar human rights abuses.

About the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act

We have previously discussed the UFLPA on the SGL Blog. As mentioned previously, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act or “UFLPA” went into effect on June 21, 2022. This law, in brief, allows Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to presume the involvement of forced labor in any merchandise manufactured in the Xinjiang Region or made by any entity listed on the UFLPA Entity List and imported into the U.S.. CBP has recently taken a number of actions, the UFLPA among them, to address human rights abuses.

UFLPA is part of a larger series of actions taken by CBP to address human rights abuses such as slavery and sweatshop labor.

Specific Recommendations

The purpose of the recommendations is to better enable the trade community to understand and comply with the forced labor laws.

The recommendation include the following:

Publishing a series of visual “Fact Sheets” which should cover:
- Detention, Release, Exclusion or Import Entry Rejection
- Ruling process flow to receive a ruling that a specific commodity does not fall under UFLPA or active WRO
- The Fact sheets should be available under CBP Forced Labor page and linked to the UFLPA webpage.
Mechanisms to receive additional questions and requests for new FAQs for public.
Revamp the Forced Labor and UFLPA webpages to clearly indicate when updates or changes are made to guidance, operations process, factsheets, ACE, or any other relevant information.
Recommendation to enhance current quarterly forced labor statistics to include additional indicators not just number of shipments targeted.

These recommendations are in addition to the recommendation to develop an Informed Compliance Publication. (Informed Compliance Publications are published by CBP on a variety of topics). Be sure to follow SGL on social media for all the latest on UFLPA, logistics news, and more!