CBP Says July 23 ACE Deadline Weekend 'Relatively Quiet,' Though Some Reject Issues Persist

CBP’s July 23 deadline for most remaining entry types in ACE passed without any major problems, although the agency continues to monitor a handful of issues causing rejects for some quota transactions, CBP officials said on the agency’s July 25 daily technical call. Despite concerns over deployment of unproven quota systems in ACE with the legacy Automated Commercial System no longer available as a backup (see 1607220064), the agency had a “relatively quiet” weekend, and continues “to work through some of the issues we have encountered,” said Seven Zaccaro, client representative branch chief in the ACE business office

Some quota transactions in ACE had been getting “system failure” errors, according to a CBP message sent out around noon on July 25 (here). The issue was purportedly resolved two hours later, with CBP telling filers to resubmit any entry summaries affected by the problem (here). Filers and software developers on the daily ACE call also reported issues with filing African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) visas, non-responses to entry and entry summary filings, and rejects for ACE entry summaries filed on ACS entries submitted before the July 23 deadline. CBP officials said they’d look into each problem.

CBP is also working through license, permit and certificate reject issues, CBP’s Brian Lewandowski said. “Depending on the nature of the license, permit or certificate,” some issues are “a format issue that has nothing to do with quota,” or related to “different validations the system is doing.” Others “are quota-related and we’re working through those,” Lewandowski said. Some client representatives are reporting that the submission is going through on the second try, “but not all the time,” he said. CBP is trying to figure out the common thread connecting the issues, if there is any, but is also working on each problem individually, he said.