CBP Hoping to Roll Out New CTPAT Portal, Dashboard This Year

CBP is working on a new, “custom-built” portal for its Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, including a new dashboard that will give CTPAT users insight into their examination rates and cost savings, said Manuel Garza, CTPAT director. The agency hopes to roll out the portal in phases beginning later this year.

The portal eventually will feature a dashboard specific to each CTPAT participant, Garza said, which will include information on the participant’s number of shipments over the past year, how many of those shipments were referred for examination, and what type of examinations they were. That will help companies “get a better understanding of what your actual exam rate is, what your cost savings is compared to non-CTPAT partners,” Garza said during CBP’s Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit April 19 in Boston.

CBP is expecting to release the dashboard during the second phase of the portal rollout, which will occur “shortly after” the first phase is released in the “September-October time frame,” Garza said. The agency had originally hoped to start the rollout early this summer but experienced “a few delays,” he said.

Garza said CBP wanted to update the portal because the current one is “based on an old platform” and is overdue for an upgrade. The agency is working with a vendor on a “custom-built design” and is expecting a “smooth transition” between the portals, but it also plans to hold training webinars for users. “I think it's really important that you guys understand how to use the system instead of us just throwing it out there to you all,” Garza said.

CBP is also hoping to conduct more in-person validations this year, he said. The agency conducted 64% of its validations virtually in 2022, Garza said, but plans to shrink that number through “quite a bit” of in-person visits this year. “We're going to be pushing probably 3,000 companies to get that done, if not more,” he said. “Everybody's going to have to be patient and respectful of when the specialist reaches out and provides a date on when we need to get this validation done. We're trying to get caught up.”

The agency recently completed some validations in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and plans to complete about 70 more in the city over the next week, Garza said. But he said the agency isn’t yet ready for CTPAT users to apply for the Nuevo Laredo location because there are “a lot of companies still in the backlog that are already in CTPAT, and we need to complete all those validations first before we get out there to allow more companies to apply to the program.” The agency will make an announcement once it's ready for more applicants.

The agency also recently conducted validations in Monterrey, Mexico City and Baja California. “Mexico is open,” Garza said.

But there are “still some areas we're not going to make it to,” he said, specifically mentioning Matamoros and Reynosa. “But as travel increases,” Garza said, “you will see more and more site visits in the interior of Mexico.”

Garza also urged CTPAT participants to make sure they’re completing their security profiles. CBP suspended or removed 213 participants in 2022, he said, and the “most common reason” was for incomplete security profiles.

CBP specialists reached out to some of those users “numerous times” to ask them to update their profile but never received a response. Garza said he personally contacted some through their phone numbers, email addresses and even their LinkedIn pages.

“Sometimes I get a response. Sometimes I don't,” he said. “We really don't want to kick companies out. But if you're not following the program, then there's only so much I can do.”

During the panel, Garza received a question from a CTPAT participant who said they're not seeing the “cost benefits” from participating in the program because “a lot” of their shipments are still being examined. Garza said CBP will reach out to ports if it hears about high examination rates of CTPAT users, but sometimes there's not much it can do.

“Every port is different, folks. I wish I could be here and tell you that every port does everything the same, but they don't,” Garza said. “So unfortunately there's really not a whole lot I can tell you.”