Coalition to Biden: Close de Minimis Loophole to Stop Unexamined Imports
The Coalition to Close the De Minimis Loophole on July 23 sent a letter to President Joe Biden emphasizing what they said are the continued dangers posed by the unchecked flow of unexamined small packages imported into the U.S.
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The coalition, which includes families affected by fentanyl poisoning, law enforcement groups and non-profits, said it would like to share its members' firsthand “experience of de minimis exploitation, which is flooding the United States with fentanyl, fentanyl precursors, pill presses, and other illicit goods.” A video released by the coalition describes a person who died in 2022 after taking a counterfeit pill they ordered online that they thought was Percocet, but a toxicology report found it contained enough para-fluorofentanyl to kill 10 people.
The coalition asked Biden to use his executive powers to "close this loophole now as Congress contemplates potential reforms."
Those seeking to smuggle contraband into the U.S. have increasingly used de minimis to do so, the letter said. This time last year, it said, CBP was processing only 2.8 million de minimis packages a day. Now it processes 4 million daily, the coalition said, citing CBP acting Commissioner Troy Miller, the coalition said.
The letter also noted that the House Select Committee on China has “provided evidence that fentanyl is readily available from Chinese online platforms and that its delivery is facilitated by the lack of oversight in the de minimis environment."
“Citing law enforcement testimony that cartels are using our lax de minimis enforcement given the astonishing number of packages flooding to the United States daily, the Committee concluded ‘the current form of the de minimis exception makes the United States the most vulnerable nation in North America to this form of drug trafficking,’” the coalition said.
Even with greater funding, CBP would never be able to properly inspect 4 million daily packages shipped under de minimis, it said. A “meaningful fix” must lead to “significantly reducing the volume of packages,” it said.
The group said it recognizes that narcotics also enter the U.S. from the southern border, but said the broader issue can’t be properly addressed without also looking at shipments from overseas.
“The port of entry that is essentially wide open to fentanyl and other dangerous goods is express entry via a tsunami of de minimis packages arriving via a system designed to accelerate the shipment of goods and bypass scrutiny,” the letter said.