[Senate Hearing 116-532]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-532
COMBATTING THE OPIOID CRISIS: OVERSIGHT
OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STOP ACT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
----------
DECEMBER 10, 2020
----------
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
43-444 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
RAND PAUL, Kentucky THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, Utah KAMALA D. HARRIS, California
RICK SCOTT, Florida KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
Gabrielle D'Adamo Singer, Staff Director
David M. Weinberg, Minority Staff Director
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Thomas Spino, Hearing Clerk
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio Chairman
RAND PAUL, Kentucky THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, Utah KAMALA D. HARRIS, California
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
Andrew Dockham, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Amanda Neely, Deputy Chief Counsel
John Kilvington, Minority Staff Director
Kate Kielceski, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Portman.............................................. 1
Senator Carper............................................... 5
Senator Hassan............................................... 17
Senator Rosen................................................ 20
Senator Hawley............................................... 28
Prepared statements:
Senator Portman.............................................. 33
Senator Carper............................................... 37
WITNESSES
Thursday, December 10, 2020
Eric Green, Director, Office of Specialized and Technical
Agencies, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, U.S.
Department of State............................................ 9
Robert Cintron, Vice President, Logistics, United States Postal
Service........................................................ 10
Thomas F. Overacker, Executive Director, Cargo and Conveyance
Security, Office of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security............... 12
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Cintron, Robert:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Green, Eric:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Overacker, Thomas F.:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 49
APPENDIX
Charts submitted by Senator Carper............................... 58
Statement submitted by National Association of Manufacturers..... 60
COMBATTING THE OPIOID CRISIS:
OVERSIGHT OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STOP ACT
----------
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2020
U.S. Senate,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, and via Webex,
Hon. Rob Portman, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Portman, Hawley, Carper, Hassan, and
Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN\1\
Senator Portman. This hearing will come to order. I see the
witnesses virtually before us on a computer screen. I see my
colleague Senator Carper is here, and I know we have some other
colleagues who have checked in this morning already virtually,
and we will be hearing from them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the
Appendix on page 33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are here today to follow up on the implementation of
legislation called the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose
Prevention Act (STOP Act). This was a direct result of an
investigation by this Committee, a couple of hearings, and some
good work that was done to be able to stop this deadly fentanyl
from coming into our country.
I want to start by thanking my Ranking Member. Senator
Carper, this will be our last hearing together, I am told, as
part of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), and
I want you to know that over the past 4 years you and your
staff have been productive partners as we have undertaken a
number of really important topics and had some success in
passing legislation as well.
We have looked at the treatment and care of unaccompanied
alien children (UAC) by the Federal Government. We have
investigated the security of personal and financial data held
by private companies and the Federal Government and have come
out with strong recommendations. We have looked at loopholes in
our sanctions program exploited by Russian oligarchs. Recently,
we have done ground-breaking work on the influence of the
Chinese Government here in the United States. This has included
a review of the threat to academic freedom caused by having a
Confucius Institute on a university campus. But also we have
exposed how China has systematically taken U.S. taxpayer-funded
research and IP to advance its own military and economic
interests through these talent recruitment programs like the
Thousand Talents Plan (TTP). We have written good bipartisan
legislation that deals with this very serious issue. We have
looked at the national security risks associated with the
Chinese Government-owned telecom firms licensed by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to operate in the United
States.
I want to thank you for your continuing bipartisan
partnership and continuing the tradition of this Subcommittee,
which is to really dig deep into serious issues and get
something done on, I would say, even a nonpartisan basis.
Today's hearing is the continuation of our work in this
Subcommittee on the Federal Government's efforts to crack down
on the fentanyl coming into our country and more broadly to
deal with the fentanyl and opioid crisis that has seized our
entire country and every State represented in this chamber.
We started with a hearing in May 2017 examining how illicit
fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than
heroin, is being shipped into the United States through the
U.S. mail. We found out that, unbelievably, almost all this was
coming through the mail system into our communities from China,
and it was the number one killer and remains the number one
killer.
We conducted a 6-month investigation into the issue and in
January 2018, Senator Carper and I issued a bipartisan report
and held a hearing that detailed how online drug dealers in
China were exploiting a loophole in international mail. That
loophole allowed packages to be shipped into the United States
with no identifying information or so-called advance electronic
data (AED), which we will hear a lot about today, and if and
only if the package was shipped through the U.S. Postal Service
(USPS), in other words, went through another channel, it had to
have this AED, which is very important to law enforcement to be
able to stop the fentanyl and other contraband from coming in.
Our report described how during our investigation
Subcommittee staff emailed with six websites located in China
that advertised fentanyl for sale on the open Internet. When
asked, all six of these websites told us they preferred to ship
through the international arm of the Postal Service because of
this loophole. In fact, one of the websites actually guaranteed
delivery of this deadly fentanyl into our communities, but only
if the fentanyl was shipped through the Postal Service. Our own
Federal Government was complicit in providing this poison to
our communities.
These online drug dealers in China preferred the Postal
Service for a specific reason. In the aftermath of 9/11,
Congress required private express carriers to collect AED on
all packages being shipped in the United States. This is the
Federal Express (FedExes), the DHLs, and so on. This data on
the packages--shipper, recipient, weight, and contents--allows
the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) folks to identify and
target high-risk packages containing illegal items, including
fentanyl. But Congress punted on whether the Postal Service
should be required to collect that same data. After 9/11, they
said to, DHL, and United Parcel Service (UPS), FedEx, and
others, ``You have to collect it.'' But they said with regard
to the Postal Service, we are going to ask the Treasury
Department, Treasury Secretary, and the Postmaster General (PG)
to make a decision, to issue a report if the same AED
requirements should be imposed on the Postal Service. That
never happened.
This left the Postal Service and the mail it carries
vulnerable to all kinds of contraband, including this deadly
fentanyl. By failing to require the Postal Service to collect
AED like private express carriers, Congress created a national
security risk in the roughly 500 million international packages
entering the United States each year. This vulnerability, of
course, was exploited by Chinese online drug dealers to
guarantee delivery of illicit fentanyl into the United States
through the Postal Service.
Based on the recommendations of our report, in October
2018, our STOP Act, was passed by Congress and signed into law
by the President. The STOP Act requires AED on all packages
entering the United States starting next year, 3 weeks from
now. Remember, this was back in 2018. In October 2018 we passed
a law. We said by January 1, 2021, coming up a few weeks from
now, you must have 100 percent of AED on packages coming into
America, just as is already required by the other carriers.
Spain, France, and Germany have followed our lead and
announced that packages shipped to those countries without AED
will be delayed or refused and returned to the sender starting
on January 1, 2021. In fact, our legislation is consistent with
the legislation that the European Union (EU) put out generally,
but specifically Spain, France, and Germany have followed our
lead and said as of January 1st we cannot accept these packages
unless they have AED on them.
This January 1st deadline was based on a generous timeline,
again, that gave the Postal Service, CBP, and the State
Department over 2 years to prepare. The STOP Act also set other
milestones for the three agencies here today. These agencies
failed to meet any of the important deadlines set out in the
legislation. The law was passed, and set some deadlines. I
think they were reasonable. They were well thought out. Not a
single important deadline was actually met.
The STOP Act required the Postal Service and CBP to conduct
a joint strategic plan for the management of AED by December
23, 2018, 2 years ago. That plan was not submitted to Congress
until March 29, 2019. The STOP Act required CBP to finalize
regulations regarding how packages would be dealt with that had
no AED by October 2019. Those regulations were not even
submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for
review until August 2020. We were told those regulations have
now been passed back to Customs and Border Protection with
comments, but we still do not know when they will be final. I
hope we will learn that today.
The STOP Act required the Postal Service to collect AED on
70 percent of all packages and 100 percent of packages from
China by the end of 2018. We are talking about way back in
January 2019. Yet in January 2019, the Postal Service had AED
only on about 57 percent of packages from all foreign posts,
not 70 percent, and only 76 percent of packages from China, not
100 percent.
The State Department also has a role. Through efforts at
the Universal Postal Union (UPU), of which the United States is
a member, along with all foreign posts, the State Department
leads the efforts to collect AED from our foreign partners.
It is true that the rate of international packages with AED
has improved over the past few years since the implementation
of the STOP Act, and I appreciate that. It has made a big
difference, and it has saved a lot of lives. In fact, less
fentanyl is now coming into the country because of that.
Three years ago, only 26 percent of international packages
shipped through the Postal Service had AED. By January 2020, it
was 67 percent. That is a nice improvement. Unfortunately,
during coronavirus disease (COVID) that amount has actually
dropped off to about 54 percent. We were up to 67 percent; now
we are down to 54 percent in October of this year. We were
making good progress, and recently we have seen a drop-off. We
want to know why.
As noted, on January 1st, the Postal Service and CBP will
be required to refuse any international package without AED.
This means that because deadlines were not met, a substantial
number of packages will be turned away starting on January 1,
2021. I am told there are about 150,000 packages a day expected
to be coming in during that time period.
Of concern, some of the countries failing to provide AED on
the majority of their packages are some of our closest allies--
the United Kingdom, Australia, to name a few. We need to
tighten up on them.
The number of seizures of illicit fentanyl in inbound
international mail is down, as I said, and that is good news--
according to Mr. Cintron's testimony today, dramatically down.
We are very pleased to see that. That means more lives saved,
fewer people falling into addiction. Fentanyl is the deadliest
of the drugs.
It seems the threat of the STOP Act and the increased
ability to target packages containing illegal items have works.
However, I understand that seizures of illicit opioids have
shifted to the domestic mail stream, mainly in packages coming
from locations near the Southwest Border. We have reason to
believe that Mexico continues to be a conduit for fentanyl,
and, in fact, some of it is actually being produced there now.
Partly because of the STOP Act, the way the traffickers send it
has been shifting not to come directly into our post boxes here
in the United States and to people's homes, but to go through
Mexico. However, I do understand that these packages coming
from locations near the Southwest Border are probably being
brought across the border first.
I hope we will hear today how the Postal Service and
Customs and Border Protection folks are dealing with this new
threat, including ensuring the safety of our mail carriers. We
have a lot to talk about in today's hearing. We need to
understand why none of the milestones Congress established in
the STOP Act were met; we need to understand how the Postal
Service and the Customs and Border Protection folks plan to
deal with the packages with AED starting 3 weeks from now; and
we need to know what efforts the State Department is taking at
the Universal Postal Union to encourage other countries to
provide AED on its packages.
I appreciate the witnesses being here today, and I look
forward to hearing their testimony.
With that, I will turn to our Ranking Member, Senator
Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER\1\
Senator Carper. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin
my statement by expressing to you, to Staff Director Andy
Dockham over there, to the other members of your staff our
heartfelt thanks for the opportunity to be your partners. John
Kilvington, who is sitting behind my right side here on the
bench, has been our Staff Director for all these years and done
a wonderful job, and I am grateful to him and to the staff that
he leads.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Carper appears in the
Appendix on page 37.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
People say to me, not every day, but I came down on the
train today from Delaware, and somebody said to me, ``Why don't
you work together down in Washington, why don't you get some
things done and work together?'' I wish that folks who feel
that way had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall at a
hearing like this and, frankly, to be at a meeting with our
staff, your staff, Mr. Chairman, and ours. If you walked in
there, if you did not know who was a Democrat and who was a
Republican in terms of the staff, you would not know. It is
really beautiful.
One of my favorite testimonies was a fellow named Rob
Wallace, who was Assistant Secretary of the Interior. He is in
charge of Fish and Wildlife Services. He is in charge of
national parks and national wildlife refuges, and at his
confirmation hearing he said--he is a Republican from Wyoming.
He said these words: ``Bipartisan solutions are lasting
solutions.'' We have worked on good legislation here. We have
accomplished, I think, a lot simply through our investigations
and the hearings that we have held. Is there work still to be
done? Sure there is. But I am enormously proud and grateful for
the opportunity to work with you and to wish you, as you are
not leaving the Senate. You are moving on to be either the
Chair or the Ranking Member of the full Committee, and we look
forward to working with you many times in the future, in many
instances. Thank you.
Thank you for holding this hearing today and for your
ongoing leadership in combatting the opioid crisis that
continues to grip our country.
As attention has necessarily shifted to the COVID-19
pandemic that has taken more than 280,000 American lives--think
about how many--that sounds like a lot of people, doesn't it?
If you go down to the Vietnam Veteran Memorial down by the
Lincoln Memorial, there are the names of 58,000 people I served
with in that war, and 280,000 American lives, that is five
times the number of names we have on that wall. But 280,000
American lives, and we continue to lose a growing number of
Americans to opioid overdoses.
More than 71,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2019.
Preliminary reports indicate that we will surpass that total in
2020. Communities in Delaware and Ohio continue to be among the
hardest hit in the country, with both States reporting higher
rates of overdose deaths than almost any other. Those are not
just numbers. Those are men and women, young people, old
people, people who have children, people who have parents,
people who have spouses, people who are dead.
When I joined Senator Portman in leading this Subcommittee
in January 2017--almost 4 years ago--we started looking into
how Americans were getting the drugs that were killing them in
record numbers. We found that some of the deadliest--including
powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl--could be purchased
easily online. Our staffs, as the Chairman said, actually
communicated with drug dealers based in China who offered to
ship them fentanyl and other drugs. Private shippers were an
option, but the international mail system was preferred.
Since we published a report and held a hearing on our
investigative findings in January 2018, almost 3 years ago,
significant progress has been made in addressing at least some
of the challenges that made the U.S. Postal Service and foreign
posts around the world vulnerable to drug smuggling.
Among the most important improvements was the enactment of
Senator Portman's STOP Act, which required more information on
packages arriving at ports of entry (POEs) in the United
States. The Postal Service responded to this new law by
successfully pressing posts around the world to increase their
collection of what is called advance electronic data from
customers seeking to ship items to addresses here in the United
States.
Not too long ago, I am told the Postal Service was
collecting almost no data on inbound packages. In late 2017,
they reported collecting data on roughly 60 percent of
packages. Today two-thirds of packages arriving in the United
States include advance electronic data.
Interestingly, the country that has been the most
forthcoming in providing information on inbound package
shipments is China--the main source of the deadly drugs that
are still driving overdoses here in the United States. Today
more than 80 percent of packages arriving here from China
include advance electronic data. By comparison, less than one-
quarter of packages from the United Kingdom (U.K.) include
these data.
According to a recent report by the Postal Service's Office
of Inspector General (OIG), our friends in the U.K. are not
alone among advanced countries that are behind in this area. A
number of European Union members and other major shippers like
Japan and Australia also have a lot of work to do.
Despite that fact, the law is clear. As of January 1, 2021,
the Postal Service must start refusing packages without advance
electronic data. According to a briefing our staff received
just this week, this could mean 130,000 mail pieces a day, or
about 4 million pieces of mail a month. Not too long ago, our
staff was told that as many as 20 million packages a month
could be held up or returned to their sender.
It is not clear yet how bad this problem will turn out to
be. But if we do wind up turning back or slowing down a large
number of packages next month, I cannot imagine other countries
will not retaliate by blocking at least some of the packages
that the Postal Service sends abroad.
After 4 years of the Trump administration's failed trade
wars and reckless international diplomacy, this is the last
thing we need. At a time when Americans are being told to stay
home and avoid inessential travel and trips to stores, more
mail delays are unacceptable.
I am a strong supporter of the data requirements and tough
deadlines that were included in the STOP Act. But what this
hearing will show us today is that the administration has
fallen down on the job in implementing the act.
I know international negotiations are tough. I am sure some
countries have bristled at the suggestion that our State
Department and our Postal Service can dictate what information
they collect from their customers. But it is hard for me to
understand why we are not in a better place than we are right
now in obtaining advance electronic data when the Universal
Postal Union and European Union requirements are so similar to
ours.
Then we have CBP, Customs and Border Protection, an agency
that was very direct with our staff in the past about what they
perceived as failures by the Postal Service in counterdrug
operations. CBP is over a year late in issuing the regulations
necessary to implement the STOP Act. Over a year late. I am
told those regulations will not be in place by January, and
that CBP and the Postal Service are endeavoring only now to
figure out what they plan to do when shipments without advance
electronic data arrive here.
In my opinion, the Postal Service and--come January 20--the
new administration will have been put in an impossible
position.
This is all coming at a time when trends with respect to
how drugs like fentanyl are getting here are changing.
According to CBP, significantly more drugs may be coming
through land ports of entry along our Southern Border. At the
same time, seizures in the international mail have declined.
What I am hoping to hear from our witnesses today is how we
can solve this. Given where the drugs are coming from and where
our trading partners are in providing the package data that we
are seeking, Congress and the public need to understand--and
starting now--how we are going to avoid disruption and delays
once the STOP Act goes fully into effect.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me say that 4 years after you
and I started this work, our staffs started this work, deadly
drugs can still easily be found for sale online. Like we did in
2017, my staff went online to search on Google, Microsoft's
Bing, and other search engines for fentanyl and other illicit
drugs for sale.
As recently as this week, a simple search for ``buy
fentanyl online no prescription''--a simple search for ``buy
fentanyl online no prescription''--yielded websites claiming to
allow for the purchase and discreet shipping of deadly drugs
directly into American homes. Without objection, Mr. Chairman,
I would like to enter screenshots of these search results into
the record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The charts submitted by Senator Carper appear in the Appendix
on page 58.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Portman. Without objection.
Senator Carper. As we press the State Department, as we
press CBP, and the Postal Service to redouble their efforts to
comply with the law and block deadly drugs before they arrive
in our communities, it is important that we also work with law
enforcement and the technology industry to figure out how we
can take these drug dealers offline.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from our
panel. We look forward to hearing from our witnesses. I want to
thank again our staffs for the extraordinary work they have
done on this front. Thank you.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Carper. Well said, and
the point being made again that private express carriers have
to have this AED on their packages. For years now, they have
required it, and we are not asking the Postal Service to do
something that is not already being done by the DHLs, the
FedExes, the UPSes, and others. Your point about China is well
taken. China is now in the high 80s in terms of compliance, so
more than 85 percent of packages from China are subject to AED.
I remember some of the hearings we had previously where
witnesses said you cannot impose this on countries that are not
as developed as we are because they somehow cannot handle it.
China has gotten the message, and we want them at 100 percent,
which is required under the statute. But there is no excuse for
countries not to work with us to provide that AED, particularly
when the European Union shares our view and so does the UPU,
the international body.
Let us introduce our panel of witnesses here.
Eric Green is the Director of Specialized and Technical
Agencies in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs at
the U.S. State Department.
Robert Cintron is the Vice President of Logistics at the
United States Postal Service. This is the third time Mr.
Cintron has testified before this Subcommittee on this topic,
and we much appreciate your continued service and attention to
this issue, Mr. Cintron.
Thomas Overacker is the Executive Director of Cargo and
Conveyance Security in the Office of Field Operations at U.S.
Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS).
We have the right people here. We have the State
Department, we have the Postal Service, and we have the folks
from CBP represented. I spoke to Postmaster General DeJoy about
this topic earlier this week, and he is eager to see the
results of this hearing as well.
Let us start, if we could, by swearing in the witnesses.
Under the rules of the Subcommittee, all witnesses have to be
sworn in, so at this time I would ask you all to please stand
and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you
are about to give before this Subcommittee is the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Green. I do.
Mr. Cintron. Yes.
Mr. Overacker. I do.
Senator Portman. OK. Let the record reflect that the
witnesses all answered in the affirmative. All of your written
testimony, gentlemen, will be printed in the record, so you do
not need to go through all of your written testimony. We would
ask that you try to limit your oral testimony to 5 minutes. You
will see a clock on the screen to help you comply with that
time limit, and then we will have a chance to get into a
dialogue with Senator Carper, myself, and other Senators who
have joined us.
Mr. Green, we will hear from you first.
TESTIMONY OF ERIC GREEN,\1\ DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SPECIALIZED AND
TECHNICAL AGENCIES, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Green. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member Carper, Members
of the Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to appear
before you today to discuss our ongoing efforts to implement
the STOP Act. The STOP Act provisions regarding international
postal agreements are straightforward. They call on the
Department of State to ensure that all international postal
obligations of the United States are consistent with the STOP
Act, particularly that act's mandate that all mail shipments be
accompanied by advance electronic data beginning in 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Green appears in the Appendix on
page 40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will focus my testimony today on our efforts to achieve
this goal, particularly with the Universal Postal Union.
As detailed in this Committee's 2017 Staff Report, efforts
to require AED with international mail have been ongoing for
many years. In the past decade, the AED issue in the UPU has
evolved from a question of ``whether'' to a question of
``when'' and ``how.''
Although there is now a consensus, some countries have
favored enacting AED as quickly as possible, while others have
been cautious in light of the challenges many countries face in
ramping up systems and processes that are needed to meet these
requirements.
In that regard, the STOP Act provides an excellent roadmap
for prioritizing mail flows on the basis of volume, risk, and
the capacity of the sending country.
The Act also recognized the important role of China, and it
front-loaded the requirement that China provide AED on an
accelerated basis, as the Chairman mentioned. This has reduced
the flow of illicit material from China.
From a diplomatic perspective, the China example is a
powerful proof of concept to show that it is possible to
transfer the required data on a large scale.
We have made progress in the UPU in ensuring that our
international treaty commitments complement and enhance our
ability to implement the act. We, along with other countries,
led the effort to mandate the provision of AED for
international shipments containing goods. As a result, as the
Chairman referenced, from January 1st, if these mail items do
not include advance electronic data, they will not be
considered compliant with UPU regulations, and we will have a
legal basis under those regulations to return them to the
origin postal operator.
Mr. Chairman, the postal sector is experiencing major
changes. The rise in email has caused a decrease in traditional
letter flows by about 30 percent over the past 10 years.
Meanwhile, thanks to ecommerce, parcel traffic has doubled over
the same period. Some commentators describe this as a ``tsunami
of packages.'' Having the data to analyze this flow of parcels
is now critical for postal authorities everywhere in the world.
In short, AED and the accompanying infrastructure is essential
both from the standpoint of security and for participation in
global commerce today.
Despite this imperative, there is a gap between AED
requirements and the capabilities of many countries. As a
result, it is likely that during 2021 mail flows from some
countries will be disrupted because they are not able to comply
with the AED requirements of the STOP Act.
To address the capabilities gap, we and our partners are
working with the UPU to provide technical assistance to
accelerate progress toward global adoption of AED. In 2019, the
Postal Service committed nearly $18 million to the UPU over the
course of 5 years to assist the development of AED capabilities
and security initiatives. In addition, the United States has
provided assistance to a UPU project which helps countries
manage electronic data to help interdict suspicious packages in
the global postal supply chain.
Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic has put some of these
projects on hold, but as soon as conditions permit, these
efforts will resume at full strength.
In conclusion, my colleagues and I at the State Department
are proud to be part of a whole-of-government response to the
opioid challenge. Guided by the STOP Act, we have leveraged our
leadership role in the Universal Postal Union to make exchange
of advance electronic data a worldwide standard.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you.
Mr. Cintron, we will now hear from you.
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT CINTRON,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT, LOGISTICS,
UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE
Mr. Cintron. Good morning, Chairman Portman and Ranking
Member Carper. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our
success in keeping opioids out of the mail and to highlight
challenges as we implement the STOP Act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cintron appears in the Appendix
on page 44.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My name is Robert Cintron. I am the Vice President,
Logistics, for the United States Postal Service. I oversee the
national logistics operation, including international
logistics.
In 2017 and 2018, I testified to this Subcommittee about
customs advance electronic data. These data are provided by to
the Postal Service by foreign postal operators (FPOs), and
include information such as names, addresses, and descriptions
of contents. Once received, AED is passed to CBP for its
screening efforts.
Before I turn to AED, I want to describe the dramatic
decline in seizures of opioids in inbound international mail.
According to the Postal Inspection Service, using fiscal year
(FY) 2018 as a baseline, we saw a 71-percent drop in
international seizures in 2019. It dropped 93 percent in 2020.
Unfortunately, this international decline is
counterbalanced by an increase in domestic seizures. Now over
97 percent of seizures are domestic, and areas near the
Southwest Border are a hot spot.
On the data front, beginning in 2015 through 2016, the
Postal Service increasingly recognized the need for more AED.
Through 2017 and 2018, we worked on various efforts, and the
STOP Act's passage reinforced this work. It is important to
note that even though the STOP Act sets AED mandates on the
Postal Service, it is FPOs that collect and transmit the data.
Even so, we currently receive AED from 96 countries, and we are
in the process of adding others. We work through the State
Department at the UPU for international cooperation, and we use
commercial contracts with FPOs to reach bilateral or
multilateral agreements.
Accordingly, since fiscal year 2017, AED has increased by
41 percentage points. In 6 years, we have gone from almost zero
to receiving AED for 67 percent of incoming packages in January
2020. To monitor progress, the Postal Service relies on monthly
data. These data are detailed in my written statement. From
fiscal year 2017 to January 2020, the AED percentage trend
steadily increased. But AED progress reversed as the global
pandemic impacted international shipments. Once international
mail recovers, we expect AED will resume its upward trajectory.
As mentioned, the STOP Act sets milestones. The most
pressing is the December 31st requirement that 100 percent of
all inbound international items containing goods must be
accompanied by AED, unless the origin country's operator is
exempted through remedial measures.
We have made strides in AED compliance, but on January 1st,
21 days from now, it is probable and foreseeable that a portion
of international packages will lack AED.
This places us in a difficult position. If inbound
shipments are not accompanied by AED, we face the prospect of
disrupting inbound mail.
On the other hand, applying alternative procedures may
require burdensome and labor-intensive procedures. We are in
constant communication with the State Department and CBP about
how best to meet the STOP Act requirements. In particular, we
look to CBP for guidance on whether it can offer remedial
measures. Absent alternatives, noncompliant shipments will be
refused.
The amount of disruption will depend on the response by
FPOs and their willingness and capacity to provide data once
the 100-percent requirement is in place.
In conclusion, I want to highlight the success of pushing
opioids out of the international mail. In part, this success is
due to the tools created by the STOP Act.
Conversely, I want to caution that the December 31st
deadline for 100 percent AED presents challenges. A portion of
inbound international packages will not be accompanied by AED,
and the Postal Service stands ready to keep these packages out
of the U.S. mail stream. Absent alternatives, this will
disrupt, to one degree or another, the flow of international
mail.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I look
forward to your questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Cintron.
Now, Mr. Overacker, we will hear from you.
TESTIMONY OF THOMAS F. OVERACKER,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CARGO
AND CONVEYANCE SECURITY, OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS, U.S.
CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY
Mr. Overacker. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member Carper, and
Members of the Subcommittee, it is my honor to represent the
men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and discuss
what CBP is doing to implement the STOP Act. The STOP Act
requires the U.S. Postal Service to collect and provide CBP
advance electronic data from foreign postal operators.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Overacker appears in the Appendix
on page 49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CBP uses AED to assess risk, identify potential violations
of law, and to combat the flow of illicit goods into the United
States, including fentanyl and other opioids. AED is the
backbone of CBP's targeting efforts. Beginning with the Trade
Act of 2002, CBP has demonstrated that, with appropriate and
timely AED, we can effectively interdict illicit goods, segment
risk, and facilitate legitimate trade.
The Postal Service has voluntarily provided AED to CBP
since 2014. Beginning in 2015, this included AED from China
Post, which CBP has successfully used to target for illicit
shipments of fentanyl. This activity reached its peak in fiscal
year 2018 when CBP recorded 263 seizures of fentanyl from China
in the mail totaling 91.2 pounds. Since then, there has been a
significant drop in seizures directly from China. In fiscal
year 2019, there were 15 seizures totaling less than one pound;
in fiscal year 2020, only four seizures, totaling slightly over
one pound. Despite reductions from China, CBP seizures of
fentanyl have increased dramatically overall. In fiscal year
2020, at the Nation's land ports of entry, seizures rose from
2,575 pounds in fiscal year 2019 to 3,967 pounds in fiscal year
2020, an increase of 54 percent. Border Patrol seizures of
fentanyl between the ports of entry increased from 226 pounds
to 809 pounds, an increase of almost 258 percent.
Approximately 93 percent of all fentanyl seizures occur on
the Southwest Border. Nevertheless, China continues to present
a unique set of challenges. It remains a major source country
of chemical precursors, narcotic manufacturing equipment such
as pill presses, other controlled substances, fraudulent
documents, and counterfeit merchandise. The explosive growth of
ecommerce and direct-to-consumer shipping, especially directly
from foreign sellers, has resulted in exponential growth in the
number of actors in the international supply chain. Driven
largely by ecommerce, CBP processes more than 1.4 million
shipments from China each day across all modes of
transportation.
Data for fiscal year 2020 indicates CBP made more than
26,000 seizures of counterfeit goods nationwide, with an
estimated value of $1.3 billion. Of those seizures, China,
along with Hong Kong, accounted for 79 percent of the total
volume and 83 percent of the total value of counterfeit
merchandise seized. This makes the use of AED all the more
important, not just for international mail but for all modes of
importation.
As of this morning, the regulation requiring AED for
international mail has not yet been published. CBP is confident
that it will be published soon. Meanwhile, we are not waiting
to implement the remaining requirements of the STOP Act.
Together with the Postal Service and the Department of State,
CBP has finalized the criteria and methodology for granting
waivers from AED for those countries that lack the technology
to gather and transmit the data, have low volumes of
international mail, and that are deemed low risk. CBP published
an interim final rule in August 2020 that implemented the
procedure for a $1 processing fee for inbound express mail
service. The Postal Service will collect the fee and remit 50
percent to CBP. We have already received the first payment from
the Postal Service, and we will use these funds to enhance our
capabilities at our international mail facilities.
CBP, DHS Science and Technology, Director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and the U.S. Postal
Inspection Service (USPIS) sponsored a contest called ``The
Opioid Prize Challenge,'' offering a $1.55 million prize to
develop a solution that could detect minute quantities of
opioids and other specific contraband in the mail stream. The
prize winner was announced last December, and CBP has awarded
contracts to purchase and deploy this technology as part of an
overall strategy to modernize mail processing capabilities,
including a multi-million-dollar renovation of our
international mail facility at the JFK International Airport.
Implementing the STOP Act is a collaborative effort. The
experience that CBP has gained working with the Postal Service,
U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Department of State has
shown that we can effectively operationalize the use of mail
AED to mitigate risks and make international mail as secure as
all other vendors.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look
forward to your questions.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Overacker.
I notice we have a couple of colleagues who are interested
in participating, so I am going to keep my questions relatively
short at the outset here, knowing that I will be coming back
for more.
This is an unfortunate situation we find ourselves in, and
we are here because, frankly, the agencies represented on the
witness stand today did not do what they were required to do
under Federal law to protect our communities. We find ourselves
in a situation where we could have up to 150,000 packages a
day, I am told--and that is consistent with the testimony you
all gave--that have to be either turned away or destroyed
because we do not have electronic data on those packages, which
is absolutely essential, as every witness has said, to be able
to stop this deadly fentanyl from coming into our communities,
but also to keep other contraband out. It has worked well. You
talked about a 54-percent increase just now, Mr. Overacker, in
seizures of fentanyl. It sounds like that was even year to
year. That is an amazing increase. We have heard from Mr.
Cintron how effective it has been to keeping the fentanyl from
coming in through the mail system. It has shifted more to
transshipment from Mexico and perhaps the precursors going to
Mexico and coming in directly. We have had other hearings on
this topic, and I will not get into the details, but to say
that we understand there has been a shift. But keeping it out
of the mail system where it was coming in with such low
expense--and that is one of the issues, that the cost of
fentanyl is so low on the streets of America--is a huge
success. That has been good. But we have to get this AED now as
required by law for everybody.
My first question to Mr. Overacker, let us start with you.
The STOP Act required CBP to finalize any regulations regarding
the refusal of packages by October 2019. Here we are, December
2020. This date was important so that the Postal Service could
prepare for this January 1, 2021, deadline coming up in 3
weeks.
Did Customs and Border Protection finalize the regulations
by October 2019 as required by law?
Mr. Overacker. Senator Portman, no, we did not.
Senator Portman. Why did you not meet the October 2019
deadline?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, I am not going to offer any
excuses. I am just going to say that, it took us 13 months to
complete the regulation package, and then it went through the
interagency review. It was transmitted to OMB in August. We got
a passback from OMB in November. It is working through the
passback process right now, and it will go back through the
Department back to OMB. I am confident, though, that we will
get this regulation package completed, and regardless of the
regulation package, all the parties involved, whether it is the
Postal Service or State Department, agree that we can proceed
with implementing the act on January 1st as contemplated.
Senator Portman. You are over a year late already, and you
say that you hope these regulations could be finalized soon in
your testimony--let me be clear here. There is no good solution
thanks to the reality that you do not have the regulations in
effect and the reality that we have not been successful in
requiring 100 percent AED as required by law.
By the way, this is not just the United States that
requires this. Other countries--I mentioned Spain, France,
Germany--require it. The EU required it until recently, and
they provided a 3-month delay until March 15th, as I understand
it. But, we find ourselves in a really difficult situation
because the law was not complied with as required.
What is your process now? What do you plan to do with
regard to AED and the lack of it coming in on January 1st?
Mr. Overacker. A couple things, Senator. First of all,
working with the Postal Service, we are still hopeful that
those AED numbers will go up on January 1st. Collectively, the
three agencies you have in front of us today, we are
implementing the strategy through the State Department to
notify the parties involved through the UPU that this
requirement is still in effect on January 1st. The Postal
Service is working to notify through the UPU those postal
operators that this is still in effect on January 1st, and we
hope that these foreign postal operators will comply.
From an operational perspective with CBP, we have daily
meetings with the United States Postal Service where we have
worked out preparations that, if necessary, we can and will
refuse mail without AED come January 1st.
Senator Portman. Hope is not much of a strategy given the
reality of the situation. In Mr. Cintron's testimony, he said
that it is probable that all mail will not have AED. It is not
probable. It is absolutely the reality. I hope foreign posts do
more between now and 3 weeks from now. Of course we do. I
suppose our legislation and the requirement of January 1st will
light a fire under some of them. But we know we are going to
have a lot of packages without AED, and we need a solution.
Mr. Cintron, is the post office clear on what should happen
to packages without AED on January 1st?
Mr. Cintron. Yes, Senator. Absent any alternatives, the
Postal Service is prepared to refuse any of the shipments
coming into the country. At our point of entry at the
International Service Centers (ISCs), we would scan, and
anything that does not have AED we would return back to a
ground handler at that point. We are prepared on the 1st.
Senator Portman. OK. You are going to turn away tens of
thousands of packages because we did not get our act together
as a government.
The Postmaster General talked about one of the issues that
you all are interested in, which is how to ensure that as
packages come to the United States, that they are in containers
that have all been subject to AED. He said that some of these
large containers have some packages with AED and some without,
and it is a huge logistical challenge to separate those
packages. You did not mention that in your testimony, I do not
think, but can you address that? Should we be requiring AED to
be provided for any inbound package before it is loaded onto a
plane? That would avoid confusion when the AED packages are
commingled with these non-AED packages. By the way, the EU is
requiring that as of March 15th of next year. Can you speak to
that?
Mr. Cintron. Yes. Absolutely, the point of origin would be
the best place for us to have that requirement in place for
that to occur, which would certainly stop those volumes from
even getting to the country.
I might add and expand a little bit that, we have, as was
stated, been working with the foreign postal operators right
along, and we do expect that there will be improvements from
now until then. The focus has really been around the STOP Act
and the compliance levels. We fully expect that to occur. But,
yes, that would be beneficial if we could stop those shipments
prior to coming into the country, and for us protecting and in
terms of getting into the mail stream is why we would create
those scans prior to entering our facilities to identify.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Mr. Cintron. We will be back
with more questions. I want to get to my colleagues. Senator
Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate Mr.
Green, Mr. Cintron, and Mr. Overacker. Thank you for joining us
today and for your testimony and your willingness to respond to
our questions.
This is a glass half full. The STOP Act set out a very
rigorous schedule, rigorous timeline, a lot of interagency
cooperation called for between the different agencies that are
represented here today in this hearing. In some regards, in
some respects, you have done well, but not well enough.
I am especially troubled by the lack of regulations. All of
the time that has been provided for CBP to issue regulations,
we still do not have them, and that is unacceptable.
One of the things we face, as our Chairman knows, my
colleagues know, is--I call it ``executive branch Swiss
cheese'' in this department. We used to have it in the Obama
Administration when we had so many folks in acting situations
there for a while, and Tom Coburn and I went to work on that
and ended up getting Senate-confirmed leaders in about every
major leadership spot in CBP. We have gone through, let me see,
at least four Secretaries in the Department of Homeland
Security in the last 4 years--John Kelly, Elaine Duke, Kirstjen
Nielsen, Kevin McAleenan, Chad Wolf--and so much confusion
about who is in charge. It is no wonder that we sit here, 3
weeks before the end of this calendar year without having the
kind of regulations that are required by law.
Let me ask a question, if I could. This is a question for
Mr. Cintron. How has the lack of clarity from CBP on the STOP
Act requirements hindered your preparations? What are you doing
now to get ready to deal with the thousands of noncompliant
packages that you are expected to see daily starting in
January? Mr. Cintron.
Mr. Cintron. Yes, we meet with CBP. On a local level, it is
done almost daily, certainly at other levels of the
organization, up here at headquarters on almost a weekly basis,
with multiple groups of people, whether it is our global folks,
the Inspection Service, or our operational folks. I would say
that we are very much in alignment, again, in working toward
being prepared for January 1st. That is where we stand right
now. We stand ready, as I said, to refuse what should not come
into the country. We are ready, absent any alternatives, to
stop that. But we have been working very collaboratively with
Customs and Border Protection and with State.
Senator Carper. Mr. Cintron, what capacity does the Postal
Service have at its international mail centers to hold packages
while decisions are being made on what to do with them?
Mr. Cintron. Again, we would have to add some--we are
prepared to add some resource--we scan the mail today. That is
how we leverage AED to begin with, so, there is a scanning
process that occurs at point of entry. We would add some
resource to be able to pull that mail out that does not contain
AED. We stand ready to be able to do it. There will be some
disruption, but we are absolutely prepared to do it.
Senator Carper. Has the Postal Service been able to
identify what the cost of full compliance with the STOP Act
will be?
Mr. Cintron. I am not sure that we have determined the full
cost. There are some costs, but we could provide that after the
hearing.
Senator Carper. I understand the Postal Service has cash on
hand of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion. The bipartisan
group of eight Senators who have been working on a COVID
package have included in their draft proposal to forgive a $10
billion loan made by the Federal Government to the Postal
Service and turn that $10 billion loan into a grant of $10
billion. I am very hopeful that that will actually be enacted,
that it will be part of a final deal. It ought to be. The
Postal Service, while not awash in money, is in actually a
better position in terms of cash on hand than I have seen in
quite a while. I have been working on Postal Service
legislation with Susan Collins and others for probably 15
years.
As I look at the cash on hand, the money that you have
available to pay for whatever it costs to do compliance, I
think you are in pretty good shape. Would you agree with that
or disagree?
Mr. Cintron. We are prepared to do what we need to do in
terms of the financials. Again, we would much need the
assistance certainly as it relates to COVID and what could be
done here in the short term, as you are well aware, the Postal
Service really looking for the long term, our solvency. The
legislative reforms that we have been requesting are the things
that we would continue to ask the Congress to work on and
assist the Postal Service.
Senator Carper. Mr. Cintron and Mr. Overacker, how do your
agencies plan to work together on the ground at international
mail centers to determine which shipments received after
January 1st need to be sent back and which can be accepted and
handled here through enhanced screening and inspections?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, if I may, with respect to the lack
of AED, the act does contemplate certain remedial efforts that
can be made, first being seizure or destruction, controlled
delivery or other law enforcement actions. For us, AED is what
we use to assess risk. Provided that the volumes are
manageable, we think we can mitigate risk by doing enhanced
scanning, use of canines, or even physical inspection. But that
will be something that on the ground at the international
service centers and our international mail facilities for those
personnel to determine what is a manageable volume, depending
on what the environment is like come January 1st. We will have
to make day-to-day decisions on that based on the volume of
mail without AED or the volume of mail that is commingled.
Those are the issues that we will face, and that is one of the
things that throughout our day-to-day conversations that we
have had, and when they approach January 1st, we are finalizing
those details as to what we can mitigate and what we cannot
mitigate, and then we would communicate that to the United
States Postal Service. If necessary, then that mail would be
refused.
Senator Carper. When we come back for a second round, I am
going to ask you about what you can tell postal customers about
delivery delays that they might expect. Thank you.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Carper.
Senator Hassan, are you prepared to speak now?
Senator Hassan. Yes, I am. Thank you.
Senator Portman. Great. You are up. Thanks for joining us.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HASSAN
Senator Hassan. Thanks so much, Chairman Portman and
Ranking Member Carper. Thank you for holding this critically
important hearing on a critically important topic, and I have
been grateful to work with both of you on the STOP Act. I want
to thank the witnesses for coming before the Subcommittee
today, and thank you for the work that you all do to make our
country safer.
Mr. Cintron, I want to start with a question to you really
concerning what we are seeing in terms of compliance by China.
I have been particularly concerned with the flow of illicit
fentanyl from China. Toward that end, I participated in 2019 in
a congressional delegation to China where I met with government
officials and pressed them to ensure that packages coming to
the United States from China had the required advance
electronic data necessary to help deter the flow of fentanyl.
I understand that China Post, while it is greatly
improving, is still not meeting the STOP Act's requirement to
submit advance electronic data for 100 percent of its shipments
to the United States. Mr. Cintron, in your view, what is
preventing China Post from complying with the STOP Act and
providing advance electronic data for 100 percent of its
packages coming into the United States? Mr. Cintron?
Mr. Cintron. Yes. In terms of 100 percent, while--can you
hear me OK?
Senator Hassan. You are breaking up some to me, but I do
not know if----
Mr. Cintron. In terms of the 100 percent, while again that
is the requirement, I would say that China is very close to
completing it [inaudible--technical difficulties] 3 weeks to go
until we hit that timeframe.
Senator Hassan. Mr. Chair, I am having technical
difficulties here, so perhaps you could go to somebody else and
we can try to get back----
Senator Portman. Senator Hassan, it is apparently on the
Postal Service side of this, so I am going to ask Mr. Cintron
if he would talk to his technical people and see if we can
improve the signal coming from the Postal Service to us today.
In the meantime, Senator Hassan, do you have questions for
other----
Mr. Cintron. Senator, are you able to hear me?
Senator Portman. I can hear you now, but we are going to go
on to another witness if Senator Hassan is OK with that, and we
will come back to you.
Senator Hassan. That would be terrific, Mr. Chair. I do
have a question for----
Mr. Cintron. Senator, are you able to hear me?
Senator Hassan. Mr. Cintron, we are going to move on to
another witness with the hope that your technical people can
work with ours, because we are having difficulty hearing you
and I wanted to--first of all, I think what I will do, if Mr.
Green from the State Department--did you hear my question about
China?
Mr. Green. Yes, I did.
Senator Hassan. What is the State Department doing to
ensure that China complies with the requirements of the STOP
Act?
Mr. Green. Thank you, Senator. We have dialogues regularly
with China. We have a drug intelligence narcotics dialogue. We
also have a counternarcotics dialogue on an annual basis with
China. In the course of these discussions, we talk about the
whole range of issues regarding narcotics and narcotics
trafficking, including policies and procedures within both
countries, as well as the STOP Act and the requirements for
AED.
I would also point out that in 2019, at the urging of the
United States, the Chinese authorities scheduled fentanyl
analogs within China itself, and according to our information,
this has led to a crackdown on the labs and some of the
websites that were a severe problem in the past.
Of course, the precursor chemicals coming from China
continue to be a problem, and this is a struggle. It is always
going to be a challenge. But we have used diplomatic channels
as well as channels through our postal operators to communicate
with China about the necessity of meeting the AED requirement.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. Now let me move on to Mr.
Overacker, because I want to follow up on Senator Portman's and
Senator Carper's line of questioning here. The President signed
the STOP Act into law in October 2018. The legislation, as we
have discussed, required Customs and Border Protection to issue
regulations to implement the STOP Act by October 2019. Yet CBP
did not provide those regulations to the Office of Management
and Budget for review until August 2020, almost a year after
the deadline.
Mr. Overacker, these implementation delays make us less
safe. I was an original cosponsor of the STOP Act, and I would
like a clear answer here about why CBP has not made better
progress. You said in response to Senator Portman on this, ``No
excuses.'' That is fine. But I want to understand why because
it is particularly concerning as a Member of Congress with
oversight responsibilities to have an agency come forward and
say, ``We could not get it done.'' What happened here?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, again, I am going to reiterate what
I said to Senator Portman, and that is there is no excuse for
this. It was our responsibility to get this done. I can tell
you this: This is an interagency process that is time-
consuming, and it is challenging to get regulations done within
a year timeframe under the best of circumstances. We worked to
the best of our ability from the CBP perspective to get these
to the Department. We worked with the Department on their
passback, and we are now working with OMB on their passback.
Again, I make no excuses for this. I accept full
responsibility for the fact that we did not meet the deadline.
Senator Hassan. I wanted the message to be clear that if an
agency is having difficulty meeting a deadline with a critical
piece of legislation that impacts the safety of our country--
and I come from a State that has been particularly hard hit by
fentanyl in particular. If there are difficulties, we need to
hear from the agency, and we need to be coordinating with the
agency to try to provide you the resources that you need,
because this is truly unacceptable. I do have other questions
for the Postal Service because now the Postal Service, already
having been impacted by the pandemic, may, in fact, have to
spend more of its time at the height of people needing the post
office at its fully capacity, may need to be turning back
packages and spending time and effort because CBP did not do
its job. That is unacceptable.
I appreciate that you are saying you are not trying to make
excuses, but we do need to understand--and I will follow up
with you--why this happened, how we facilitate compliance
moving forward, and how we make sure CBP complies in the future
with the law. I appreciate your directness here, but I am very
concerned about it. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I am being handed a note that our witness from
the Postal Service may have better connectivity, but I also see
that my time is up, so I am happy to come back if you----
Senator Portman. Let us see if Mr. Cintron can respond to
your earlier question.
Senator Hassan. OK.
Senator Portman. Mr. Cintron, are you with us?
[No response.]
I think we have lost him. Senator Hassan, if you can join
us in a few minutes after Senator Rosen has a chance to ask her
questions, maybe we can get back to him.
Senator Hassan. That is fine. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Senator Portman. Hold on. They are back. Mr. Cintron, are
you on?
OK. Senator Rosen, why don't you go ahead?
Mr. Cintron. Yes, I apologize for that. We are back on.
Senator Portman. OK. Mr. Cintron, you are back on. We are
going to ask you to respond to the question that Senator Hassan
asked you earlier. Again, Senator Hassan, thank you for your
support and help with regard to getting this STOP Act
implemented, and I agree with you that this is unacceptable.
Let us see what we can hear from the Postal Service.
Senator Hassan. Mr. Cintron, are you there?
Mr. Cintron. Yes. If this was in regard to the question on
China and their--I am. Can you hear me?
Senator Hassan. Mr. Cintron, the question was--and can you
hear me? Now I see you. We have an echo going.
Mr. Chair, I am going to suggest that we continue to work
on the technical issues with the post office and move on to
Senator Rosen's questions.
Senator Portman. I think that is a good plan.
Senator Rosen, you are up, and thank you for not directing
your questions to the Postal Service.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROSEN
Senator Rosen. Technology is great when it all works, so I
guess some days with all of this we have to have a little bit
of a sense of humor. I, too, have some questions for the Postal
Service, but we will submit those for the record.
I will direct my question to Mr. Green. I think I see you
on my screen there. I want to build a little bit on what
Senator Hassan was talking about with drugs coming in from
China, but I want to talk broadly about the global challenges
we have. As you heard today, according to the USPS OIG report,
as of March 2020, 135 countries and territories do not yet have
the capability to send advance electronic data to the Postal
Service, and as such, we do know that they are not going to be
able to meet the STOP Act's requirement, and I am a cosponsor
of the STOP Act.
Mr. Green, could you describe in a little bit more detail
how the State Department is going to approach this challenging
task not just in encouraging other countries to set up uniform
systems so they can partner with us, but how do we partner with
them and help them solve their challenges? Because if we stop
it there, it will not get here. It seems to me it would be in
our interest to help support these countries as best we could,
135 of them, to stop the packages from coming to our home
towns.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Senator. This question is really key
from a standpoint of security but also global commerce. I think
the main incentive for these countries is economic. In order to
participate actively in ecommerce for their small businesses,
the consumers to really take advantage of these opportunities,
they need to get on board and require--and use the electronic
data in order to facilitate their interactions with customs
services, with other postal services.
Concretely, we are working with the UPU. The UPU has a
mission for setting standards, including on AED, which we have
talked about previously. But it also has a development mission
in order to raise the technical capacities of postal services
all over the world. Working through the UPU, the Postal Service
has provided the UPU with nearly $18 million to help them do
training seminars both on a bilateral and a regional basis with
a variety of postal operators throughout the world.
In addition, our Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement is
also doing a program with the UPU to help foreign postal
services and customs authorities to intercept suspect packages
within the mail flow. Among the UPU initiatives that I would
point to is the development of a mobile app. What we are
talking about here is allowing these countries to leapfrog the
technology, so they are moving from a paper-and-pen system,
filling out customs forms, and they are going to move
immediately to a mobile app where the customer can enter the
data about the package, the address, the contents, and the
price, and then match that with the bar code that their postal
service provides them. Then that data will be used throughout
the global postal supply chain to overcome a lot of these
problems that we have been talking about.
The UPU now is piloting this app in about 15 countries in
the very near future, and I think this will be of great
assistance to a lot of these postal services. We have to
remember in some of the developing countries, you still have
post offices that may not have access to the Internet or
electricity. But what we have seen in development is that the
mobile phone is a real multiplier for helping overcome some of
these technical challenges.
Senator Rosen. Thank you. I am not sure that Mr. Cintron is
back, so I will follow up on what you said, because you said
there are countries that may not have electricity or Internet,
and I love the idea of an app. I think that is a great way to
go. But, of course, those post offices still may have go to a
larger post office somewhere else as a bridge before it gets to
us.
Could you speak how you decide or maybe prioritize which
countries to assist first, where you are putting these efforts
and technologies and how we can find those--I guess maybe it is
the common points that we think they are coming in. First, how
are you hitting that?
Mr. Green. I can get back to you with the precise criteria
that the UPU is using to target countries, but I know that they
have been--they have tried to be really comprehensive and
provide training and seminars to all countries, because this is
a universal requirement.
I would also note that within the STOP Act there is also a
prioritization in that the STOP Act provides the possibility
for countries to be exempt from the AED requirement if they are
low-volume countries in terms of the mail they are sending to
us, if they are considered low risk, and also if they are
considered to have a low capacity in terms of the technology.
Some will be eligible for a temporary exemption from the AED
requirement, but we are working vigorously to get everyone up
to the AED standard of 100 percent that the Chairman referred
to.
Senator Rosen. Thank you very much. I will yield back. I
will submit my other questions for the record. Like I said, I
love the creativity thinking of how an app can get to everyone.
Most people around the world, a lot of them do have phones, and
we have to use everything, every tool in the toolbox to stop
the drugs and other things from coming here.
Thank you.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Rosen. I apologize that
we do not have a connection to the Postal Service. We are still
working on that.
By the way, you talk about technology. I could not agree
with you more, and we have a situation now where China as an
example is providing AED on between 85 and 90 percent of its
packages. I remember in the hearing we had I was told that
countries like China could not figure out how to do it
technologically. Of course, my comment was, ``I think they have
computers in China and a lot of technology.'' We need to get
them to 100 percent. But this is doable, and I think your point
is a good one.
Let us get down to brass tacks here. How can we maximize
AED, which is necessary to protect our country, not fentanyl
but so many other dangerous items that come in, other
contraband. We need this AED. Everybody has testified to that
today. How can we maximize that without having a significant
disruption of commerce, particularly packages coming from other
countries to U.S. consumers and businesses?
One thing we talked about today is that in the STOP Act we
were careful to put into place a waiver. If a country lacks
capacity, is low risk and low volume in terms of packages,
there would be a waiver for a short period of time provided. It
sounds like you are going to take advantage of the waiver that
we have provided in the law on January 1st.
Mr. Overacker, can you tell us how much of the volume would
be affected by this? What percentage of the volume, how many
packages? How has CBP determined which countries it plans to
provide waivers to?
Mr. Overacker. Thank you, Senator. With respect to granting
of waivers to countries, we essentially started with the list
of 192 members of the UPU, and we looked at those countries in
consultation with the Department of State, which of those
countries would be considered countries that did not have the
technical capacity or who were not at that time capable of
transmitting data through the UPU servers for AED to be
transmitted via the Postal Service to us. We identified that
universe.
We also identified based on other criteria those countries
which we thought would pose items of risk, so whether it is
risk for narcotics smuggling or the like. Those countries we
would not grant a waiver to.
We also looked at the most developed countries and who
those are, the ones that, regardless of where their status is
right now, that should be transmitting data to us. With that,
we have arrived at a preliminary list of countries that we
believe would be eligible for waivers----
Senator Portman. How many countries?
Mr. Overacker. I believe at this time the number is 136,
and, Senator, before you say, ``Wow, 136, we are giving away
the farm,'' we are not giving away the farm. That number
represents countries of low volume that probably will not
really significantly impact the volumes that we see. But those
are the countries that would meet the criteria described in the
act, that they lack the technical capability, they are low
volume, and they are low risk.
The remaining countries, which is over 50, I believe, they
are still going to account--according to the Postal Service and
what they tell us, because we rely on them for the volume data.
We know what we see. But they are the actual keepers of the
final data. We are still talking about--even with the waivers,
we are not going to significantly impact the overall volume.
The largest countries still account for over 80 to 85 percent
of the total volume, and those largest countries would not be
granted waivers under these criteria as described by the act.
Senator Portman. You are talking about 15 to 20 percent of
the packages would be covered by these relatively small
countries, it sounds like, with low volume where you feel like
there is a low risk as well and where they lack capacity.
Mr. Overacker. Yes, Senator.
Senator Portman. The other 80 to 85 percent of packages
would be required to have AED or the packages would be dealt
with.
Your waiver authority under our law is for 1 year, and then
you have to report back to us. I hope you will exercise your
discretion there and have the waiver go for a shorter period of
time in many cases where you can get these countries, even low-
volume, low-risk countries, to comply with the AED standards.
Can you respond to that?
Mr. Overacker. Yes, Senator, I can. With respect to the
waivers and the notification of the waivers, coordinating with
the Department of State and the U.S. Postal Service,
collectively, we are prepared to begin notifying those
countries that will receive a waiver. In those notifications we
state unequivocally that this is a temporary waiver that will
be reconsidered. But we also state that even for those
countries that are transmitting data right now may receive a
waiver. When I say ``transmitting data right now,'' still low
volume, that we expect them to maintain their current
transmission rate, and that we will monitor that rate
continuously to ensure--and that they need to work to get to
100 percent compliance, that a waiver is not simply, ``Oh, we
do not have to worry about this anymore.'' We will communicate
them in the notifications that they still must work to get to
100 percent.
Senator Portman. You are required to report back to us
within that year. I would hope that you would have a
stipulation that if they are not making progress toward more
AED, then the waiver is gone.
Mr. Overacker. Absolutely.
Senator Portman. That is not unreasonable. We would love to
have your report to us as to how you are implementing that. I
think that makes a lot of sense.
The second sort of brass tacks question is: How about the
AED that is coming in from high-volume countries or higher-risk
countries? You said that is a significant part of it, probably
80 to 85 percent of the volume. You talked earlier about the
ability to do enhanced scanning, sniffing dogs and so on. The
EU has provided an initial grace period through March 15, 2021,
even though their requirement, again, was to do it by the first
of the year. But they have said that only if the risk can be
mitigated, as I understand it. What other mitigation techniques
could you use to ensure that we are not opening ourselves up to
more dangerous substances?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, the act specifically states that we
could seize, destroy, do controlled deliveries, or other law
enforcement actions. For us, the first thing that we would do
for mitigating risk, if we do have something absent AED and if
we are not going to refuse it, we would use enhanced scanning,
we would use a canine, we would do a physical inspection if the
volumes allow us to do that.
The other thing that we could do--and this has to do with
sort of our approach to enforcement in general--is work with
those countries, the ones that have the greatest challenges
with respect to getting the data, but work with them on
assessing what is the risk of the mail from the country. This
is something that we do all the time with partners, whether it
is through our Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism or
other techniques where, if we can validate some sense of
internal control that they have over packages that are leaving
their country so that we have a comfort level that they are low
risk, then we might be able to segment that out temporarily as
a way of addressing inordinately high volumes of mail without
AED.
Senator Portman. How about the idea we talked to Mr.
Cintron about earlier of requiring inbound mail to have AED? In
other words as the mail is prepared by the foreign post, that
the AED must be on those packages so that you do not have this
issue of mingling of AED packages and non-AED packages? Is that
something that you believe that you can require and enforce
under current law?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, is that addressed to me or is that
addressed to----
Senator Portman. That is addressed to you, but if Mr.
Cintron can join us, that would be great, too.
Mr. Overacker. Senator, let me say that--I mean, you are
really hitting upon something that could be very helpful
operationally, and that is, if we could get assurances from
these foreign postal operators, and even if it is absent AED,
that they can segment out in the receptacles which receptacles
do not have AED and that certain--which receptacles do have 100
percent AED, operationally that would really help us really do
what we need to do on the ground to segment the risk.
Senator Portman. Do you have the authority to do that, to
require that?
Mr. Overacker. I do not believe that we have the authority
to do that, but I do believe that through a voluntary process
and engagement with the State Department----
Senator Portman. Mr. Cintron, any comments? My time is
expiring, so any thoughts you have, Mr. Cintron, can you join
us? We cannot hear you. You may be on mute.
Mr. Cintron. Can you hear me now, Senator?
Senator Portman. Yes, we can. We can hear you again.
Mr. Cintron. All right. I apologize for the technical
difficulties. Obviously, we do not have the authority. We
would, again, be asking the State, maybe the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) might be the appropriate area
where that would be significantly beneficial to be able to stop
it before it actually gets to the country, and I think that
would be well worth our pursuing that avenue.
Senator Portman. Thank you. Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I was trying to ask a question when my time expired a bit
earlier in the hearing, a question of Mr. Cintron and Mr.
Overacker. The question I did not get to for both of you is:
Given the large number of packages that are projected to arrive
without AED each day starting in January, what can you tell
postal customers about delivery delays that they should expect?
Mr. Overacker and Mr. Cintron.
Mr. Cintron. Yes, I will try and answer that question. We
certainly from a communication perspective our global teams are
in constant communication not only with foreign postal
operators but also with our customers, internationally. I think
everybody is well aware of the act. It has kind of been part of
our strategy from the global team, really to make sure that
there is significant communication around the STOP Act and the
requirements. Again, we are very confident that we are going to
have a lot of people that are going to become compliant as we
get closer to this date in 3 weeks. But we will continue those
communication links to the customer so there is clarity around
the requirement and the potential for delays. Again, as normal,
absent those alternatives and guidance from CBP, it will be
refused. But, otherwise, as we have discussed, some of these
items, we will stay very close to the customer base.
Senator Carper. Thank you. The next question would be for
Mr. Overacker. Are you concerned that drug dealers and others
will find a way to smuggle illegal items through those
countries who are given a waiver? Is that a concern?
Mr. Overacker. Yes, Senator, it should be a concern, only
because anytime you squeeze a balloon in one place, it is going
to pop in the other. Let us be honest. The drug-trafficking
organizations and others will try to exploit whatever weakness
there is. The intent of the waiver, though, is to take that
into account, and that is where through our risk assessment,
looking at which countries pose the greatest risk.
Just as with everything we do within CBP, whether we are
implementing some sort of new enforcement action for a trade
remedy or something like that, we are always looking for how it
affects the overall environment, looking for transshipment. If
we see trends of where there is a shift or change in volumes or
anything like that, that would be an indication to us that we
would want to scrutinize that directly.
Senator Carper. Thank you. This will be a question for the
entire panel. Mr. Cintron's testimony discusses how drug
dealers have shifted strategies and may now be turning away
from international mail. More drugs it seems are coming across
our southern land border and are being found in the domestic
mail.
Given this, what can you tell us about how effective AED is
in catching drugs and other prohibited items? This is for the
entire panel.
Mr. Overacker. Senator, if I may go first----
Senator Carper. You may.
Mr. Overacker. I am glad you mentioned the Southern Border
because that is where we see the most illicit drugs coming into
the country, not just fentanyl but all illicit drugs. That is
the primary vector. On the Southern Border, we are talking
about drugs being smuggled in both privately owned vehicles,
sometimes commercial vehicles, and even by pedestrians.
Over these last 3 years, CBP has initiated a major strategy
to enhance our screening capabilities on the Southern Border.
With the assistance of Congress, we received $570 million for
new AII equipment on the Southern Border. We have issued an RFP
and are granting contracts for new scanning equipment that will
raise our scanning rates on the Southern Border in the
commercial environment from our current rates of 17 to 40
percent--or to 70 percent, and in the POV environment from
roughly 2 percent to 40 percent. That is our major strategy, to
try to harden our ports of entry to prevent the fentanyl from
crossing on the Southern Border.
Senator Carper. You did not mention how that new wall down
there is affecting all of this.
Mr. Overacker. Senator, what I would say is that we should
have a comprehensive approach to border management, which
includes technology, hardening the ports of entry, and if
appropriate and where appropriate, physical barriers between
the ports of entry.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
I have a friend, you ask him how he is doing, he says,
``Compared to what?'' Back shortly after 9/11, I understand
that FedEx, UPS, and DHL began requiring AED and implemented
that within a year after 9/11. That is about 18 or 19 years
ago. I understand that the difference in the mix of customers
is quite different between largely--not entirely but largely
business customers that FedEx, UPS, and DHL deal with. But it
has been 19 years since they implemented literally to 100
percent the kind of safeguards that we are asking for the
Postal Service with help from CBP to implement now. Nine years.
Why the dramatic difference between the two? I can
understand a couple of years, but 19 years? Anybody? Anybody
there?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, I see my colleague from the Postal
Service--I am not sure if he is able to answer.
Senator Carper. Excuse me. I misspoke. I said 8 or 9 years.
It has been 18 or 19 years.
Mr. Overacker. The 18-or 19-year timeframe you are
referring to is, of course, the Trade Act of 2002 where we
implemented advance electronic data requirements for other
modes of transportation, in particular sea cargo, but we also
implemented it for air, rail, truck cargo. Of course, the
express consignment operators also have participated in the air
cargo advance screen program that we implemented, first on a
voluntary basis in 2010 and then codified in 2018.
I would suggest that all of these vectors have their own
unique challenges, and control over the movement of the goods,
whoever has that control is the person that has the best
capability to actually provide data.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, I am channeling my father
this morning, and we can all remember things that our parents
said to us growing up. One of the things I always remember my
dad saying to us is, ``If a job is worth doing, it is worth
doing well.'' He said it probably every other day. But he
drilled it into me, and I like to focus on doing things well.
I also understand--I do not like to assign blame to folks
without saying, ``What can we do to help?'' To say we are
pleased with the progress that has been made, we are not.
Clearly, we are not. I cannot imagine that you are either. Is
it better? Are we doing better than before? Yes. But we need to
do a heck of a lot better. We also need to realize--it has been
alluded to--that this is a little bit like squeezing a balloon.
You squeeze it in one place to stop drugs coming in through the
Postal Service, illegal drugs coming through through the Postal
Service. Squeeze the balloon, and they will find another way to
get in.
I guess this is for Mr. Overacker as much as anybody. But
as we move even closer to that 100 percent number and the bad
guys are still seeking to send fentanyl and other dangerous
illegal drugs in, what will the Congress need to do--this
Committee and what will the Congress need to be doing in order
to react to that change in behavior?
Mr. Overacker. Senator, I want to thank you and all of
Congress for the generosity they have shown us with respect to
what we are getting in our ports of entry for nonintrusive
inspection (NII) equipment. You have also been generous with us
in our abilities to deploy more canine teams to our ports of
entry. We now have 453 fully trained canine teams. You have
been generous to us for other equipment such as Gemini
detectors. We now have 400 of those deployed, and we will be
deploying--we will get up to 550 this year.
Also, through your generosity, we have been able to
implement our mail modernization strategy, and also all of the
things we are doing with our laboratory and scientific services
where we now have field operating labs at nine locations, and
we are projected to have three more. This is a capability that
really gets us right on the ground where we need scientists to
help us when we detect fentanyl or other opioids so that we can
immediately segment those out. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Carper. Thank you for that response.
Mr. Chairman, thanks very much. My sons, your children are
grown, they are out of school. In college and other grades in
school K to 12, people are going to get an A, B, C, D, F. Or
they can get an incomplete. If I were assigning a grade to the
effort we are hearing about and discussing here today, I would
give it an incomplete. We need to be hitting the A mark. We are
improved, but there is a heck of a lot more to do.
I will close with this thought. I have been 20 years on
this Committee, and almost every time I ask a panel, when we
are trying to deal with an issue like this or a problem like
this, we all know we need to be successful, I always like to
ask, ``What should we be doing in our role?'' I hear over and
over again in the hearings from A to Z, oversight, we need to
do oversight. This is an oversight Committee. This is like the
Oversight Subcommittee of the Oversight Committee, and I am
pleased that we are exercising our responsibilities, and it is
important that even when you move to take over the leadership
either as our Chairman or Ranking Member on the full Committee,
you keep your eye on this and make sure that the rest of us do
as well.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Carper.
I am going to comment on Senator Carper's incomplete grade
in a moment, but I see Senator Hawley has joined us now.
Senator Hawley, are you prepared to ask questions?
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HAWLEY
Senator Hawley. Yes, I am.
Senator Portman. Great. You have 5 minutes, and thank you
for joining us.
Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cintron, let me start with you. I want to start about
something that you write in your testimony about the decline of
seizures of fentanyl and synthetic opioids in the inbound
international mail but we are seeing an increase in seizures of
the same types of drugs in domestic mail. Can you tell us a
little bit more about that trend that you have identified and
what we should make of that?
Senator Portman. Mr. Cintron, I think you are on mute
again. Can you try to unmute yourself?
Mr. Cintron. I apologize. Can you hear me?
Senator Hawley. Yes.
Mr. Cintron. OK. My apologies again.
What I would prefer to do is provide that information at
the conclusion of the hearing. It has law enforcement-type
sensitive data around that information, but the Inspection
Service could clearly provide feedback on that.
Senator Hawley. Very good. We will give you a question for
the record. What I am trying to get at here is whether or not
we are playing Whac-a-Mole and we are not really making any
progress in illicit drug distribution if we are shifting from
international mail to domestic mail. Can you comment on that
broadly?
Mr. Cintron. Yes, and I believe, we have kind of discussed
it a little bit in the hearing here. It is like a balloon,
right? You squeeze it at one and it comes out the other. I
think that, the one thing I have learned over the last several
years is the collaboration of all the agencies working together
so that you identify whether it is the use of AED on
international when it is coming in or other types of
information that are utilized collectively through the
agencies, we can understand and see what is happening in other
places and how it is coming into the country.
Senator Hawley. Very good.
Mr. Green, if I could shift to you for a moment, let us
talk a little bit about the Universal Postal Union. I
understand that you discussed this a little bit in the hearing
thus far. In your testimony, you touched on the added
challenges that the pandemic has created by preventing the
Universal Postal Union from adopting in-person trainings that
help countries adopt AED.
Can you elaborate further on how the pandemic has impacted
the adoption of AED either here in the United States or
globally?
Mr. Green. Yes, thank you, Senator. When I was testifying,
I was specifically referring to the training and seminars that
the UPU has been doing for individual countries and for groups
of countries to familiarize them with the AED requirements, and
we have done a lot of these remotely, but we all know that
there is a big difference doing something, via Zoom and having
a trainer doing in-person, hands-on work with people learning
about equipment, answering questions in real time. I imagine
that has degraded the ability of these remote countries to
really take up the AED challenges as quickly as we had hoped
they would have been able to do throughout 2020. As I
mentioned, we can get more details to you on precisely how
COVID has impacted the training rhythm.
I think my colleague from the Postal Service can speak to
this--the pandemic has really put strain on postal services all
over the world. The interruption of air traffic has really
limited and challenged their ability to move their product.
These guys are essential workers, but they are dealing with all
of the challenges that we are familiar with in trying to
continue to provide their service in these times. Adding a new
requirement such as AED I am sure has stretched many of these
foreign postal operators.
Senator Hawley. Just in my brief time remaining here, Mr.
Green, I want to ask a question about China. I know that
Senator Hassan explored some of this, and I would like to delve
into this a bit more. I am concerned about the degree, and long
have been, to which China has been responsible for allowing
fentanyl to enter the United States. Tell me more about what
you know about our relationship with China on this in
particular. Is China working with us? Particularly, when it
comes to the UPU are they living up to their promises and
obligations?
Mr. Green. Thank you. In terms of the AED requirements, I
think as my colleagues have mentioned, they are doing quite
well. They were front-loaded by the STOP Act to provide this
information earlier. As I mentioned, we have a full range of
interactions with the Chinese Government on drug control
issues, and I think the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
is really the lead agency talking about the operational work
that they do with China. But we do have a dialogue with them on
these policy issues, on scheduling issues in the international
treaties that deal with drug control. China, I think, has been
helpful with scheduling some of these fentanyl analogs so that
they are scheduled not only in China and the United States but
globally.
But I really think DEA would be the best source of
information on the day-to-day interaction on drug control
cooperation.
Senator Hawley. Very good.
I see that my time has expired, Mr. Chairman. I will have
some additional questions on this subject and others for all of
the witnesses.
Thank you all for being here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Hawley. Great
questions, and your insight about the overall volume of illegal
drugs coming into this country I think is consistent with what
we have heard today, which is that we have made real progress
in the mail and trying to keep the drugs out of the mail, but
as a result, we have seen increased seizures at the border.
One thing that I think is true is that the cost of fentanyl
on the street was so low. In my own State, law enforcement
would tell me it is lower when you compare it to things like
marijuana, as an example, and having the ability for it to come
directly from China by the mail exacerbated that. Having it be
transshipped and all of the ways in which Mexico is eventually
sending it up here, you probably have a higher price on the
street, which helps in terms of the demand side. But ultimately
this is a demand question, and it can only be solved that way.
In the meantime, we have to do what we can on the supply side,
and that is why we had to stop this fentanyl from streaming in
directly in the mail from China, which was what was happening
and continues to happen to a certain extent, but it has been
reduced dramatically, and that is the good news today.
The bad news is that we have learned today that our
agencies and departments just did not do their work as they
were required to do under the law, and, therefore, we find
ourselves in this tough situation at year end with so many
packages that are not going to have AED. We heard earlier that
there is a waiver process and probably 15 to 20 percent of
those roughly 150,000 packages a day could be dealt with
through the waiver. We also heard about some mitigation efforts
that Customs and Border Protection could take.
I would ask you, Mr. Green, we are not the only country
that requires AED on all packages starting January 1st, are we?
Mr. Green. That is correct, Senator. As you mentioned, the
European Union is implementing this standard as well, and the
UPU has mandated really that it is an international standard.
Obviously, many countries are going to fall short meeting that,
but we also through the UPU have gotten concrete authorization
to turn away packages that are not compliant with this
requirement. That not only ensures that there is a standard out
there, but there are also remedies, and we can take action
against countries that are not living up to that standard.
Senator Portman. Can you describe the actions that France,
Spain, and Germany are planning to take?
Mr. Green. I think they are roughly parallel to ours. As
you mentioned, they are going to be starting later in 2021----
Senator Portman. I think those three countries, with all
due respect, Mr. Green, are actually going to go ahead, they
say, and refuse packages and not follow the EU guidelines.
Anyway, we will talk more about that perhaps after the hearing.
But the point is there are some countries like France, Spain,
and Germany that are taking this very seriously.
I do have a chart here showing the compliance that we have
had with AED and the big picture here, which we talked about
today, is that between the time at which we passed the
legislation and started to implement it and really January of
this year, we had about a 157-percent increase in compliance.
That is the good news. As we know, there has been a reduction
in the fentanyl coming through the mail as a result, and that
is good news. It has saved lives. Certainly, as we talked about
earlier, it has at least shifted the way it is transshipped.
Unfortunately, since January, that has gone down some, so
now we are only at 107 percent of where we were at the start of
this rather than 157 percent, and we have talked about why the
COVID-19 situation has affected that. I understand that. On the
other hand, we have to redouble our efforts now and do so.
As I close out, let me again thank Ranking Member Carper
and the Members of the Subcommittee and all of our witnesses
here today. We are struggling right now, and the context of
this hearing is that we not only have a COVID-19 crisis, we
once again are facing an increase in overdose deaths, an
increase in addiction. Sadly, some of the figures that were
talked about earlier of 70,000-plus Americans dying every year
appears to be on track to be exceeded this year. Again,
fentanyl is the single deadliest of those drugs, often mixed
with psycho-stimulants like crystal meth, cocaine, or others.
But it is not just about fentanyl. It is about meth. It is
about other drugs that we know are coming in through the mail.
Some of those drugs like Ecstasy and other drugs, including
Tramadol, which is a cutting agent for fentanyl and heroin, are
coming in through the mail as well. This is poison coming right
into our communities, so we have to do better.
I am encouraged by the increase. I am glad that 90 percent
of those seizures are now domestic because that means we have
made some progress. But we cannot let up now.
I want to thank our law enforcement and our Border Patrol
organizations for their efforts on the front lines. The men and
women who are doing it every day deserve our respect and our
appreciation, but we have to do better. We are going to
continue to work with you on this between now and 3 weeks from
now because we think that there is a way to increase compliance
and by the same token not have a substantial disruption in
commerce.
With that, the hearing record will remain open for 15 days
for any additional comments or questions any Subcommittee
Member may have.
Senator Carper, any----
Senator Carper. Just one last quick word, if I could. This
past Monday was December 7th. A lot of us think of that as
Pearl Harbor Day. It is also Delaware Day, and it is the day
233 years ago that Delaware became the first State to ratify
the Constitution. In that Constitution, it called for the
creation of what became the Postal Service. You may recall that
our first Postmaster General was none other than Ben Franklin.
The Preamble to the Constitution begins with these words:
``In order to form a more perfect union.''
``In order to form a more perfect union.''
The idea is everything we do, we know we can do better. I
think arguably we are doing better with respect to the issues
that are before us today. But this is an all-hands-on-deck
moment. All-hands-on-deck moment. It requires the best efforts
of every one of us.
For those who participated in this hearing and those who
work with you that are working hard to get us to where we need
to be, thank you. But, everything we do, we know we can do
better. With the number of lives that are on the line here that
have been lost and that are still at risk, we must do better.
Thanks so much.
Senator Portman. Thank you, Senator Carper. Again, thank
you to our witnesses. We look forward to continuing to work
with you over the next few weeks to help address this January
1st deadline.
With that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]