Land Border Ports Move to 'Downtime Procedures' Due to ACE Disruptions

Several CBP land border ports are now operating “downtime procedures” due to problems in ACE, an agency official said April 1 during a call with software developers. The affected ports include Laredo and El Paso in Texas, he said. “We are seeing significant disruptions at the land border ports at this time,” he said.

A CSMS message said “CBP is aware of issues with the ACE CBP MultiModal Manifest issues” and that “ports will be operating in downtime procedures.” While the message doesn't specify the land borders, the official said that there have been no reports of problems other than at the land borders. The official said the agency used more general language in case the problems do spread to other modes.

Many of the land border ports had already put in place “downtime/facilitative processes to keep cargo going,” he said. “Each port handles it a little differently than others, based on how big they are and etc., but, hopefully nobody is saying 'Sorry, you can park until ACE comes back up.' That's what we don't want to hear.”

The problems are “tied to the internal portal issues we've been experiencing,” another CBP official said on the call. CBP is dealing with a number of ACE issues related to a patch installed by the agency earlier this week, he said.

A different CBP official said that K-Line America is showing some improvements after a cyberattack has paralyzed the company's tech systems for over a week. K-Line's email system recently returned, and “they are slowly bringing their system up, maybe sometime next week is what we're hearing,” he said. There will be more information to come about how to handle “the bills that were presented as paper or emails,” he said. CBP understands that if the bills get electronically submitted again, “there is a downstream effect where then everything would have to be electronically sent referencing those bills,” he said.