[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
        
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                  U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
43-444 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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        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.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Portman appears in the 
Appendix on page 33.
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    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.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Carper appears in the 
Appendix on page 37.
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    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\
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    \1\ The charts submitted by Senator Carper appear in the Appendix 
on page 58.
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    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.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Green appears in the Appendix on 
page 40.
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    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.]

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