DOJ Says CBP Has Broad Authority to Detain Goods; Aluminum Goods at Issue Now Seized
The lengthy detention of some $25 million worth of aluminum products falls within the government's broad authority to control the movement of cargo through seaports, the Justice Department said in a Feb. 10 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California's Eastern Division. The court filing was in response to a lawsuit filed by Perfectus Aluminum over the detention of aluminum goods in September (see 1701130033). While the Perfectus suit claimed that CBP's detentions of the goods was costing the company millions of dollars before any seizure or forfeiture proceeding began, the containers were seized soon after the company filed, the DOJ said.
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All of the containers still detained as of Jan. 9 were seized on that date and no further costs will be incurred by the company as of then, the DOJ said. As a result, Perfectus can now "seek their return through formal judicial civil forfeiture proceedings," which are an "adequate legal remedy to address its claims to the containers," it said. "As for the preseizure costs incurred by Perfectus during the period of detention, Perfectus submitted a claim pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act on January 31, 2017 for those costs, thereby exercising its right to a legal remedy with respect to those costs. For all of these reasons, the motion for return of property should be denied in its entirety." The DOJ notes that "because of the nature and volume of the seized property here, the actual seizure is still ongoing (and may not be complete by the time of the hearing on this motion), and a full inventory of the containers is expected to take several weeks to complete."
Arguments from Perfectus about the government's failure to follow its own regulations for issuing detention notices don't "rise to a constitutional violation," the DOJ said. "While the government may be obliged by its internal regulations to provide certain types of notice when merchandise is detained at an international border, there are other situations where it is not," it said. Even so, Perfectus knew of the detention within a few days of the detention, the DOJ said.
As Perfectus said in its lawsuit, the containers held aluminum pallets, not the alloyed aluminum extrusions that were described in export documents. "The fact that the cargo in the containers was something different than what was represented in the export paperwork was reason alone for not only the detention of the containers, but the eventual seizure, the DOJ said. The government also isn't legally obligated to "satisfy Perfectus’ curiosity about the full details of its reasons for the detention, especially where Perfectus admits that the export paperwork it submitted was -- at best -- inaccurate."
Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of the DOJ filing.