Customs and Border Protection, U.S.

United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is a federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created in 2003 as part of the reorganization [Page 656]of federal agencies after DHS's creation in November 2002. Headquartered in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., a federal building housing both public- and private-sector offices for the purposes of advancing trade, it is responsible for preventing entrance into the United States of terrorist individuals, groups, or resources.

U.S. Border Patrol Agents of the Sector Response Team (SRT) search an apartment building room by room in downtown New Orleans, September 19, 2005. SRT is the Border Patrol version of a SWAT Team and operates at the sector level. Legislation enacted after 9/11 substantially increased the border patrol's budget and manpower, making it one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the country.

CBP is in charge of formulating and enforcing regulations on international trade, customs, and immigration; it also carries out border-security duties, such as those pertaining to the international trade of narcotics or stolen or otherwise illegal goods, and the threat to American agriculture posed by foreign biological elements, including invasive species, plant and animal diseases, and crop-destroying pests. Many of its duties complement those of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS agency formed at the same time. The key distinction is that while both agencies are charged with immigration and customs enforcement, CBP's highest priority is terrorism prevention, and its immigration concerns are aimed mainly at the security of the nation's physical borders, whereas ICE's purview is broader.

CBP absorbed much of the U.S. Customs Service (Customs) when it was created, with the remaining elements transferred to ICE. Customs was one of the oldest federal agencies, established on July 31, 1789, as the fifth act of the brand-new Congress, for the purposes of collecting the duties on imported goods authorized by the July 4, 1789, Tariff Act. Customs agents were originally called customs collectors and were assigned to a particular port of entry or other geographic jurisdiction. Apart from a number of minor excise taxes—notably on whiskey and rum, tobacco and snuff, and refined sugar—most federal revenue until the Civil War was provided by the tariffs collected by Customs. Sources such as federal income, estate, and gift tax were not added until [Page 657]the 20th century, when the expanded duties of the government necessitated expanded revenues.

Though primarily a revenue collection agency, Customs's need to inspect arriving goods in order to correctly assess a tariff made it the most logical agency to be assigned further duties of preventing the introduction into the country of illegal goods, whether as freight or carried by passengers entering the country. Such goods included inherently illegal goods such as drugs, stolen or counterfeit or pirated goods, and illegal forms of pornography; goods that were not declared as required by law, such as weapons or large sums of cash; and goods rendered illegal because of special conditions, such as those produced in countries against which the United States was enforcing an embargo, for example, Cuba. Once assigned this duty, Customs transitioned into a more active law enforcement agency, pursuing investigations in conjunction with the Border Patrol and other federal agencies.

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