C-TPAT the Paper Tiger

On April 3rd, 2020, the covid pandemic was in full swing and chaos in international trade was afoot.? As I had done many times before, in my military career and manufacturing career, I was sitting at what I called the battle captain desk dealing with crisis management.? I worked for an international firm with north of 22,000 employees.? I would become the central point of command.? The day we collectively decided we had a crisis on our hands I climbed into bed with my notepad attempting to define my mission moving forward.? That day was in mid-March.? I wrote “save as many jobs as you can” into my notepad and with that set about writing the policies we are all too familiar with today from that era.? I stole, pillaged and creatively expressed aloud ideas both dumb and brilliant.? Listened to others and made their ideas my own.? We were in a crisis and the entire team was on-board.? A contaminated shipment on one of trucks with a load of presumed methamphetamine made that crisis worse on this particular day in April.

In order to address the needs of the company we developed the plan to disperse the executive committee to their homes.? With special care for the older, higher risk to the younger and identified special skills that required field activities in order to support the broader company and support services required to keep clients moving.? The majority of our company resided in Mexico in what is known as Shelter Services.? We ran the administration side of the house.? The human resources, carrier transport, medical and made sure the electricity bills were paid on time to keep machines humming and product flowing.? The client base focused on what they did best, make stuff.? We quickly established a fifteen minute meeting time restriction via zoom and had client calls for no longer than that.? We were moving fast in a stressed period that required focus and determination.? Eighteen hour days were the norm and we had a minimally exposed team to make all the things happen that were required to meet the mission statement of saving jobs.

At 11:07 on April 3, 2020, I received a WhatsApp message with a picture of packages strewn about on the floor of a 53ft trailer.? The caption read “ Edgar, the driver, at one of our plants with a contaminated shipment.”? The phone call after was for clarity about what I was looking at on my phone with a leader in the transportation division.??

At 7:03 in the morning, a different driver was dispatched to a manufacturing plant to pick up an empty trailer.? The client requested an empty trailer be positioned in El Paso at a trailer yard.? Dispatch sent one driver to position the trailer at our company headquarters for an export driver to take to El Paso from Juarez at a later hour.? Dispatch found Edgar, the export driver, in the cafeteria eating breakfast and notified him he had an exportation. The routing was to take the empty trailer from the headquarters building, drive to a third manufacturing plant, pick up a box of material and its paperwork, then deliver the empty trailer to one trailer yard and the box of goods to the other client in El Paso.? None of this seemed unusual.??

Once Edgar finished eating he performed his maintenance checks and hooked up the trailer and then he proceeded to the third facility.? Once at the facility the truck and trailer were inspected for a third time.? On this inspection a resilient gate guard took his rubber mallet and beat on the wall of the empty trailer noticing a muffled noise as if the wall was filled.? After another hammer was found the wall was destroyed allowing for packages to fall out onto the floor of the trailer.? I was notified immediately.

C-TPAT (Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) is a program that began in November of 2001.? The idea was built upon the back of previous programs allowing the US government to extend its security via a protocol system beyond its borders.? But this was unique for really only one reason.? It carried with it a mutual recognition agreement with participating countries. In Mexico, the federal government had agreed that the protocols set forth in this security system would be honored.? This in essence, allows for the idea that the program is a formal international agreement signed between two governing bodies.? In reality and practice this is a paper tiger.??

Since the dawn of man there have been international treaties.? These are some of the original diplomatic methods utilized for nations to communicate and negotiate.? In general, treaties are considered in the following legal stature.? Local or state law, federal law, treaty and then constitution being the most powerful of documented protocol or law.? This works for a layman like your writer to understand its positioning in law when dealing internationally.? Therefore, in theory, a mutual recognition agreement signed by two countries meets the requirement to be called a treaty.? The legal scholar warriors will take issue with the simplicity outlined here.? However, the agreement, in this case, allows for a security protocol that encourages cooperation with enforcement agencies in exchange for leniency on time of investigations and criminal charges or seizure of assets.

Once the contamination of the company’s truck was confirmed, I conducted a flurry of phone calls.? The CEO, every executive in the chain of command, operations directors and managers were advising me and asking additional questions for clarity.? Most personnel were at home distancing and unattached from the ongoings in the field.? I myself was comfortably sitting in an office executing operations via zoom.? We established four viable options for action.? 1. Drive the trailer to the desert and leave it. 2. Take the trailer to the street outside the fence of our facility and hope the owners of the product would take the trailer and or product. 3. Notify the local police.? 4.? Notify CBP and execute a controlled shipment to the United States.

There are issues with every one of these courses of action.? To drive a trailer to the desert and leave it would imply we lose the asset.? Eventually it will be found and an investigation will ensue.? An organization must lie and say it was stolen.? The second option was eliminated immediately due to the fact that there were multiple vehicles with unidentified men outside the fence line of the facility and we were concerned about the safety of our personnel on-site.? The third option seemed reasonable enough and took the longest to eliminate.? At the end of the day it came down to local employees having enough experience with the local police to know that the responding agency would shut down the facility with five companies operating within it for weeks in order to investigate.? This went against our mission statement.? The lack of morality in all the ideas became evident as it was discussed.? The fourth and most viable at the time was to notify authorities we felt we could trust and execute a controlled shipment.? I personally called a CBP port director and asked him to take this trailer once we delivered it.? He agreed.

The next few hours were filled with chaotic discussions on how to move, when to move, are those cars filled with bad guys and are we safe?? We decided to pull in three additional trucks and an escort in order to run a feint operation.? We could play a shell game on the forty-five minute drive to the port of entry.? If the bad guys were afoot they wouldn't know which truck to take down.? I spent the time available ensuring my drivers that they would be safe and no consequences would befall any of them.? I am, after all, a combat vet, trust me.? I've done this before.? We have C-TPAT behind us.??

The movement went without issue.? We collectively tracked the truck via GPS and whatsapp with the nervous driver headed to his destination.? Unbeknownst to me at the time, the US port director had notified the Mexican authorities.? His texts to them, which I received later, were clear that this was a service executed by the driver and the company.? He wanted the truck to come to the US per protocol of notification from me.? The Mexican authorities notified their boss in Juarez and that administrator notified the Mexican National Guard.??

Once Edgar arrived with his empty trailer, save for the contamination, the National Guard was waiting for him.? They manhandled him out of the truck.? Placed him on the ground and told him he “was fucked”? Within twenty-four hours the news media in Mexico had released the official statement from the National Guard that their “non-invasive contact team had discovered 41 kilos of cocaine and heroin”.? No mention of C-TPAT protocol was mentioned nor any notification by anyone outside the government.

Over the coming months CBP was quiet.? I called the attaché post in Mexico City.? The SCSS office repeatedly.? Tried to contact any of the various assistant commissioners for help in relegating the facts around C-TPAT and this agreement we had in place following a set of rules for all to follow and stay safe.? The Office of Field Operations (OFO) was nominally helpful as they just happened to play a part in the travesty of Edgars life.? The state department wasn't interested. We set about caring for Edgar in jail with packages and whatever we could provide. In the end we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys and went to bat in the court system for the driver that was so obviously innocent.??

The sticking point in the trial was the ignorance of us, the company, to have moved a load of drugs within the borders of Mexico.? Based on federal law this was clearly illegal.? I had spent years developing C-TPAT protocols, hosting SCSS agents in and out of Mexico and attending conferences looking for and listening to best practices for the industry while training employees that this is how we will behave.? And, ultimately, we did behave this way.? Never at any of these conferences or courses nor meetings was it inferred that we were ignorant of the local and federal laws.? Or that we would be held accountable if we followed the protocols we spent so much time adhering too.? To the contrary, we were encouraged to follow this system and help the mutually agreed upon system flourish in this interconnected economy.

Edgar was found not-guilty and released from prison on December 8th, 2021.? In all, he had spent 1 year, 7 months and 8 days in various jails or prisons.? His family was waiting for him outside the prison around 5 am when he was released.? His time lost was due to my own incompetence and inability to manage this crisis effectively.? Nothing I say at this moment can correct my actions or make him whole.

C-TPAT for all its hype fell flat in this case.? The mutual recognition agreement was found to be ineffective in overcoming the laws set in place by a country that has a somewhat effective system of law.? The OFO officers did the right thing within the limits of how they could support our case.? The office of SCSS never involved itself nor did the office in Mexico City or Washington DC.? The typical reply would be to contact the OFO.??We spent months sending the investigative material to CBP. Describing our actions, protocols, providing GPS data, trailer logs, maintenance logs, defending our driver and explaining why he had no idea and never even been to the originating facility. That was just by happenstance. Nothing was ever done at the political level. OFO simply didn't have the umph to move a nations law.

I am now applying for another company’s C-TPAT validation.? I am writing the policies that will guide this company’s future security system to include the increased scrutiny laid out by CBP.? We are now monitoring for money-laundering and writing statements of support and the like that continue to pressure the need for notification to CBP and its SCSS agents to be able to scrutinize a company’s handling of the security outside the borders of the United States.? For my part I continue to circulate amongst the industry leaders and C-TPAT is on the tip of our tongues at all times.? All of us, monitoring for someone to have lost their validation, for they must be excommunicated.??

We, the companies of that industry in Mexico, are actively stating our intent to support this system that has adapted over the last 23 years into a force to be reckoned with.? Without C-TPAT validation, mom and pop carriers are left wanting business.? It has excelled at introducing an increased complexity for protocol development and been able to do so only because industry got behind CBP and pushed leaving the smaller parts of industry behind.? It has been wildly successful in developing a security industry unto its own.? The real question outstanding is, are the United States and Mexico going to back our play, and when?