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U. S. Plans to Preclear Some Cargo in Canada

Would ease traffic on two crossings

By Jerry Zremski

NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
May 18, 2011

WASHINGTON — In hopes of reducing congestion on the Peace and Lewiston-Queenston bridges, the U. S. government will start a pilot project later this year to preclear some trucks and cargo in Canada before they reach the border.

Speaking at a House Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday, Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said the project would be aimed at routine cargo that could be shipped safely into the U. S. without inspection at the border.

The program is intended both to speed truck traffic at the bridges and to better focus resources to make the border more secure, Bersin said at the hearing, which dealt with security issues along the Northern Border.

“The concept is that we could separate out trusted shippers and trusted shipment even in advance of them coming to the port of entry, and therefore permitting them to be released without having to go through the ordinary port of entry process,” Bersin said. “That is a matter we are working on and we hope to present a pilot in the not too distant future.”

Bersin’s announcement came as good news to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., who chaired the hearing and pressed Bersin about congestion problems at the Buffalo-area international bridges.

“This is essential to Western New York, which always centered its economy on the ability to quickly move and store goods,” said Schumer, who termed the pilot project “terrific news” for the region.

Bersin also said he hoped the pilot project could be expanded, pre-clearing a good deal of the routine truck cargo crossing the border.

However, not all cargo will be

screened in that way.

“As far as practical, the notion of segmenting out trusted traffic is very critical to heightening the security profile” and allowing customs agents to focus on genuine threats, Bersin said.

Still, much remains to be determined from the pilot project.

A federal source with knowledge about the program said it would start later this year.

Customs and Border Protection still has not determined where it will preclear U. S.- bound trucks in Canada, or how many can be cleared safely in that fashion.

U. S. officials are continuing to work on those issues with their Canadian counterparts — who, so far at least, have not gone about trying to develop a similar program in the U. S.

News of the preclearance experiment comes at a time when a plan to expand the Peace Bridge inspection plaza has found itself mired in controversy, due to neighborhood objections.

But the preclearance plan stops well short of “shared border management,” a long-discussed concept of clearing all U. S.-bound Canadian cargo in Canada, thereby eliminating the need for a Peace Bridge plaza expansion.

U. S. officials have cited security reasons as precluding such a broad-ranging plan. The current preclearance effort is only expected to affect a fraction of the U. S.-bound cargo.

Discussion of the pilot program took up only a short segment of the hearing, which dealt more broadly on a recent Government Accountability Office report that only 32 miles of the 4,000-mile U. S-Canadian border can be called “operationally secure.”

To help correct that, the Department of Homeland Security later this year will begin using Canadian military radar with its U. S. counterpart to detect low-flying planes going from Canada to the U. S. with drugs, federal officials at the hearing said.

The merged radar technology has already been used successfully along the Canadian border in Washington state, and Schumer and other senators had pressed for it to be expanded eastward.

jzremski@buffnews.com .null