DHS Seeks Input on Implementation of Forced Labor Law

The public comment period for input on how to implement the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will begin Jan. 24, DHS said in a notice. Within the notice, DHS offers 18 questions that commenters may want to address as part of the process. Comments on the implementation will be due March 10. Effective June 21, the law will impose a new rebuttable presumption that goods linked to Xinjiang province are made with forced labor and are prohibited from being imported (see 2112280048).

DHS seeks input on a broad swath of issues, including some basic questions on what goods are coming out of the region and which sectors should "be high-priority for enforcement." Other questions ask about ways and technologies CBP should use to trace the goods and how the U.S. can identify more entities exporting the violative goods. It also asks how to uncover companies that are using Muslim minority workers transferred outside Xinjiang through coercive government programs.

The questions seem "very open-ended and suggest" that the government "may be starting from a low baseline of knowledge," Sidley Austin lawyer Ted Murphy said in a blog post. While "this process needs to start somewhere," with "the government’s experience imposing Withhold Release Orders, identifying shipments to detain and making admissibility determinations over the past couple of years, it may have been more helpful if they explained how they are doing those things now, so people could react and then build from there," he said.

Following the comment period, DHS will hold public hearings to discuss the law. The comments and the hearings will help inform a report to Congress about enforcement that is due 180 days after the law was enacted, or June 21. That report is required to include some guidance for importers about due diligence expectations and what is needed to rebut the presumption.