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Washington, D.C.—The inadequate funding of the invaluable trade functions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is stifling the agency’s ability to collect import duties and enforce applicable U.S. trade and security laws, including intellectual property rights (IPR) statutes, the head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) told a key Senate committee today.

“NTEU is deeply concerned with the lack of resources, both in dollars and in manpower, devoted to CBP’s trade functions,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley in testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“CBP is the second-largest generator of revenue for the U.S. Treasury,” Kelley added. “The committee should be concerned as to how much CBP trade enforcement staffing shortages cost in terms of revenue lost to the U.S. Treasury.” Since 2007, CBP has been collecting more than $32 billion in duties and fees on imports valued at more than $2 trillion.

Specifically, the NTEU leader pointed to a developing staffing crisis in CBP’s Fines Penalties and Forfeitures (FP&F) section, where import specialists, paralegal specialists and others are responsible for enforcing IPR statutes to prevent trade in goods that infringe on the nation’s various patent and copyright laws, such as counterfeit clothing and pirated movies and music.

With the administration’s fiscal 2012 budget proposing no increase in CBP trade operations staff, President Kelley called on the committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), to support the hiring of additional CBP trade staff to enforce the nation’s 400 U.S. trade and tariff laws and regulations. Since 2003, the number of overall trade staff at the agency has been largely frozen.

The NTEU leader also urged the committee to focus on the fact that CBP Officers and Import Specialists both have been tasked with increasing the number of IPR shipments that are reviewed and seized, resulting in an “unprecedented number of IPR seizure cases.”

CBP’s own numbers point to a staffing shortage in the FP&F section of about 200 full-time employees. According to agency estimates, by 2010 CBP should have had 514 FP&F Officers and paralegal specialists working at ports of entry nationwide. Instead there are only about 315 FP&F employees on duty. Due to this staff shortage, and to due process requirements under the Fourth Amendment, CBP has been unable to process some of its seizure cases in a timely manner, resulting in some seized shipments being returned to importers and released into general commerce before being properly reviewed and possibly forfeited and destroyed.

“With ever-increasing IPR seizures, this will necessarily result in due process releases,” President Kelley said. “CBP cannot make the case that they are enforcing the law when counterfeit shipments are being released instead of destroyed.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including more than 26,000 employees at CBP.