CBP checks more ?empties? on SW border

CBP checks more ôemptiesö on SW border U.S. Customs and Border Protection this month installed two cargo imaging systems to check inbound empty trailers at the commercial crossings in El Paso, Texas, Patrick Simmons, director of non-intrusive inspection technologies, said.
   The Vehicle and Cargo Inspection System (VACIS) is configured as part of the entry lane portal that trucks pass through for customs clearance. The Portal VACIS machines are located at the Bridge of the Americas and Ysleta crossings in the designated lane for empty trucks. CBP also has one piece of equipment each at the Laredo and Pharr, Texas, ports of entry and in Otay Mesa, Calif., near San Diego.
   The Portal VACIS is set up much the same way as radiation portal monitors, with two stanchions on either side of the lane that the truck drives through. After the cab passes the scanner, the driver hits a button to turn on the radiation and pulls through to the guard booth. The images are simply intended to confirm that a trailer or container is empty. In the event a dense anomaly is detected, the truck is diverted to a secondary screening area where it is sent through a regular imaging system.

Portal VACIS at Bridge of the Americas and the Ysleta crossing.

   CBP operates about 200 large-scale X-ray VACIS machines in either mobile or fixed variants. Inspections must be scheduled and trucks or containers staged in a special area instead of the normal traffic lanes. The main difference is that the Portal VACIS, made by San Diego-based Science Application International Corp., is a very low energy system that uses cesium 137 as its radiation source. CBP originally used the machines as its primary non-intrusive inspection technology between 2000 and 2003, when it began upgrading most of its truck-mounted and re-locatable VACIS equipment to cobalt-based systems that can penetrate dense materials, Simmons said in an interview.
   CBP decided to use some of the leftover machines to scan empty truck containers and at airports where the small containers used for air cargo are much less dense, he said.
   Simmons wouldn’t comment on future deployments other than to say “you can count on seeing more of these.”
   On the commercial side, some marine terminals use the Portal VACIS to prevent fraud and theft by drivers who are supposed to pick up an empty but try to take a loaded container instead. Maher Terminals in New Jersey purchased a Portal VACIS for internal use to make sure before loading on a vessel that containers said to be empty actually are, Simmons said.
   Vessel carriers charge lower rates for empty containers.    Maher Terminals' security chief did not return phone calls seeking further details.
   The Portal VACIS on the Southwest border has detected 6,000 pounds of marijuana and 1,300 pounds of cocaine in supposedly empty containers during the past three years, Simmons said. ' Eric Kulisch