Our company brings in about 500 containers a year from Eastern Europe, China and South America. (full of wood products) This past year, we have only had THREE inspected. The only way we know they have been inspected is because we receive a bill from the Port Authority and Customs for the inspection....around $500.
We are a relatively small company bringing in containers. I can't help but wonder what gets through if only fewer than 1 percent of containers are checked.
Scary!!
The hunt for weapons of mass destruction at New Jersey ports is getting more rigorous.
Federal authorities will soon bring online 12 new gates that can detect whether a container passing through has nuclear material inside, closing a gap in port security that allows such materials to enter the United States.
The gates monitor the radioactivity level of any vehicle or container that pass through. If radioactivity is discovered, customs officers divert the truck through a second detector. The type of radioactive material present is then compared to a computer record of the contents of the container to make sure that the two match.
The gates are the final part of a multilayered strategy in which the department targets containers most likely to carry weapons, and subjects them to extra scrutiny.
And the scrutiny starts long before a ship reaches the port.
At least 24 hours before a container is shipped to the U.S., the vessel owner must send authorities here detailed information about the shipment, such as the contents, the company sending it and where the goods originated.
A computer analyzes the data, as do customs officials in New Jersey and Virginia. They look for factors that mark the container as suspicious, such as coming from a region where terrorists are known to be active or containing items that do not normally come from the area, McCabe said. About one in 10 are deemed suspicious.
Containers that raise concern are often inspected at the foreign port, McCabe said.
"The idea is to push the border as far away as possible and identify a potential problem as early in the supply chain as possible," he said.
Suspicious containers that get to New Jersey and New York are also scrutinized by customs officials such as Inspector James Ginty and his team, armed with a gamma-ray imaging system known as Vehicle and Cargo Inspection System (VACIS).