How Customs Works

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Opposite me is one Charles W.

(00:21):
Chuck Chuck Tran Bryant. Nice call back, Yeah, Chuck Tran
call back? Yeah, the thing? Uh auditioned and won the rowl.
You've never acted like audition for anything? I mean sure, No.
I used to be in children's theater. Really yeah, interesting,
I've never done that except my audition with you, of

(00:42):
course for this spot. That one really well, so good. Yeah.
So you're so kind, You're too kind. You're generous actress
I would say about each other Jenners so Chuck, Yes,
you just move on. Sure, okay, Um, if you've ever
had a hand anchoring for um African monkey meat, I

(01:04):
can tell you where in Europe to go get it.
Really yeah, you can go to Paris, to Charles de
gal Airport and they have monkey meat. They have bush
meat of all kinds. Apparently bush meat is what it's called.
Bush meat is another term for any kind of wild
game or unregulated game. You can make the case that

(01:26):
livestock that doesn't pass in through any kind of um
regulatory body sure is considered bush meat. But typically bush
meat is um. A bush man goes out into the wild,
shoots a monkey through the head with an arrow, and
um chops it up and there's your meat. You can
also do that with um, crocodile. You can do that

(01:49):
with river hog, porcupine whatever. It is a little gross,
but they there was a study. I guess somebody noticed
that there is a lot of bush meat coming through
UH Paris, and so these UH wildlife officials got together
with the customs agency there and over seventeen days they

(02:10):
searched one and thirty four passengers randomly, I guess, but
they were probably like, oh, you're coming out of Africa, right,
And they found that half of them were carrying bush
meat and their luggage unrefrigerated luggage, like you opened up
their duffel bag and there was a lot of monkey
right there, as opposed to the refrigerated luggage that you
you like, well, I mean you would like to think

(02:32):
that they would at least, you know, rig some dry
ice something. It is a little nasty um, but that,
my friend, is part and parcel for a day's work
for customs official, is it not? It can be. Let's
talk specifically about US customs for a second. Where did

(02:53):
it come from, Chuck? Where did this idea originate? Where? Chuck? Well,
you know, dude, I know everyone likes to think that
our founding fathers were just all about like everybody having
freedom and the government, no one owing government money for anything.
But that's not true at all. George Washington and the
Founding fathers in the first Congress actually said, you know what,

(03:14):
we are a struggling nation and we need to raise
some dough by way of tariffs on mm hmm, how
about imported goods? Right? And so they said sure. So
that was the birth of customs, right. Actually, we can
point to the very day that it was born. The
Terrifact of July four nine was passed on July thirty one,

(03:35):
seventeen eighty nine. Uh and it did exactly what you
just said, right, Like you said, if you're carrying stuff
into the country, we get the taxi on it just
because it's originating outside of the country, right and then
right yeah, like Savannah, yeah, um, and uh so people
come in there funneled in through these ports, and they're

(03:58):
charged dough right big time. They Actually, I was staggered
by this. The U S Customs for like a hundred
years supported the entire government infrastructure. UM. By eighteen thirty five,
we had zero debt thanks to Customs revenue. And even today,
as far as I know, the Customs Agency is second

(04:21):
only to the I R. S in generating revenue for
the United States. Right, Yeah, I think I didn't get
a hard number, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of
about thirty billion dollars a year that they bring in
billion dollars a year from almost what we bring in
for discovery. Yeah. Originally, Chuck, the Customs Service did a
whole lot of stuff, including UM Census Veterans Affairs UM

(04:49):
and the National Institute of Standards in Technology was actually
born out of the custom Service. They're the ones who
came up with our system of um way and standards
because they had to come up with the way to
describe stuff that they were seizing or taxing or that
kind of thing UM. And actually I wrote a really
cool post on the metric system. I don't know if

(05:10):
you ever read it, but that's where I learned that
it was really cool. It's a cool post. And the
Coast Guard two was birthed from the Customs Office. That's right,
Jerry thinks you are hilarious anytime I mispronouncing some perfect titters. Um,
so chuck. The custom Service did all this stuff, spawned
all these extra agencies, and then um pretty much stayed

(05:33):
the same for a while until two thousand three, Um,
when George W. Was in office. Uh, the Customs Service
became the US Customs and Border Protection. Yeah, part of
the Homeland Security Office department, which makes sense, I guess
in a way unless you have like a comprehensive immigration agency, right,

(05:59):
good point, um, And so pretty much their their main
job is to control or oversee the flow of goods
from outside the borders and and inside the borders out
right right. They are this thin blue line between you know,

(06:19):
free trade and total anarchy. That's a good point, thanks man. Um.
So they seize contraband, they process people, they process cargo. Um,
they enforce uh stuff is as laws as desperate as
bush meat importation to intellectual property law, Like if you

(06:39):
get caught with some you know, burn DVDs that are
clearly pirated, you're gonna get in trouble and you would
have gotten caught by the Customs Department, right all in all,
their enforcing about four hundred different provisions of law, right, Yeah,
and they like to refer to themselves as the oldest
law enforcement agency in the United States. And I think

(07:00):
the duty that scares me. And we're gonna say duty
a lot in this podcast. We should probably just get
it over with. Yeah, not d O O D y duty,
d U T y duty, right right right, I just
want to clear that up, um and chuck. They they
oversee what's called exodus um cases. Yeah, what's that? Exodus

(07:25):
cases are? I guess that's kind of like broken arrow
or something like that. It's, uh, if you have weapons
or weapons technology, UM. Weapons intelligence is anything you can
destroy the US with or attack the US with. Customs
is on that and they deemed those exodus cases and
those are big time. Yeah. I just saw a guy.

(07:46):
I didn't look into it too heavily, but like in
the news this week, there's some custom sting operation where
this big businessman was selling like some sort of batteries
that help uh a missile launch to Iran or something.
I don't know, I need to look it up. But
big stinging down type that is exodus. Um, I guess

(08:08):
if the urban legend about Saddam Hussein importing PlayStations to
use the very sophisticated chips in his guided missile. Yeah, yeah,
when I think the first PlayStation came out, that that
was an urban legend around it. Yeah, that's a silly one.
So chuckers, Like we said, at the basis of all this,

(08:30):
it's the customs service in any country is charged with
keeping an eye on the flow of goods across the borders, right.
And one of the reasons why is because, as we saw,
George Washington and the founding fathers were hipped to the
idea that being government and all, you can push around
guys who are importers exporters, right and um say, hey,

(08:54):
give us a cut. Well, yeah, the idea is kind
of twofold. It's um. One is because America wants you
to buy American goods, but a lot of times, most
times goods from other countries you can buy cheaper. So
they say, all right, well, if you're gonna buy something
from over there, we want to want you to support America.
But if you're gonna do that, then we want to
get our our piece of the pie, right or they

(09:16):
will they charge duty on um. Say, uh, some breros
in Mexico. That's a good one. So there. So you
can get a sombrero here, but you're gonna pay like
seventeen dollars for it, the same sombrero, virtually the same,
except it was manufactured in Mexico. Mexico is a bad
example after NAFTA has passed. But let's stick with it,

(09:39):
shall we. Um, you can get that one for two bucks. Well,
the government's gonna impose a duty on it. So maybe
ultimately once you pay the duty and how much you
were being charged for the sombrero. You're actually paying nineteen
dollars for the Mexican one, where you can get the
seventeen dollar one here in the US, so you might
as well just get that. Well yeah, but that that's

(10:00):
if you're shipping like large. Like there's duty free exemptions.
We should go over that real quick. Yeah, duty free?
Explain it? Duty free is uh? In the United States?
You get a four hundred exemption if you come back
into the country from anywhere except a Caribbean basin country
or the Virgin Islands, Guam or American Samoa. So if

(10:22):
you come in from Europe, let's say you're allowed to
bring four dollars worth of stuff in uh, and you
declare it and um, four dollars worth of bush meat
of bush meat, and then after that you have to
start paying your tariff on that. And they they have
specific outlines for um like tobacco you can bring two
hundred cigarettes or a hundred cigars as part of that

(10:46):
under four hundred dollars. And alcohol, of course, you can
bring in one leader a booze duty free. And you
can bring in a curtain of cigarettes and a leader
of booze. Yeah, that's a party right there. You got it.
And you know, a few cigars as long as they're
not Cubans, which we'll get to. But I did find
this interesting. Fine art and antiques that are at least

(11:07):
a hundred years old or not subject to tax really
no matter. I mean it could be like a ten
thousand dollar painting and no duty. What about a twelve
thousand dollar painting no duty? Huh? Ask me about folk art?
What about folk art? Chuck duty? Really? Yeah? Just fine
art folk The custom service has an opinion on art,

(11:29):
and the folk art is crappy. Yeah, or maybe not,
or maybe they think it's so great it should be taxed. No,
I don't think that's no. No, have you seen folk
art before? Yeah? I had. I should say say this
real quick. When I was living in l A. I
went to a show with Emily, one of those shows
where they have folk art, and I thought that, wow,

(11:51):
what a scam. He was like, I could I should
do this? And I came up with an idea to
drum up um buzz by calling, over the course of
like a year or different places and saying, hey, do
you have any art by Chuck Bryant, this artist, and
to the point where they had heard this name. And
then at one point I would enter these places and say, hey,
I'm Chuck Bryan. I didn't know if you want to
cover some of my carry some of my art nice.

(12:13):
They'd be like, well, we've heard of you. Let me
see that piece of tin the east Lung paints on.
That's actually a brilliant idea, Chuck, somebody should go do that.
Why didn't you ever do it? Because it's fraud and
it's not nicer ethical. I don't know that that's fraud
in the art world. No, Okay, I think that's just
normal business. You know, I didn't do it. I was lazy. Yeah. Um,

(12:34):
so that's duty free. That is very odd. Did you
find out why folk art is just that it is? No,
we could probably call and get an answer to that.
You want to call right now? Okay? Um, so we
covered duty free, right, yeah, And I guess we should
talk about big business. It's because there's two different kinds.
There's people, there's businesses that ship in and import tons

(12:57):
of stuff and ports of call, and then there's you
and I getting off an airplane. Well we should say
also that with duty free, the exemption applies to the importer,
not the customer. Right, So if we come back into
the States or yeah, if we come back into the
States and we say I could use a leader of
Scotch and the cartoner Dunhills, so we pick them up

(13:19):
and then we continue on into the United States, we
don't pay any duty. But if we do the same
thing at Charles de Gaul Airport, uh, and then coming
to the United States, we pay a duty because we're
still importing, right yeah, yeah, okay, so you're actually an
importer that that you're classified as an importer. Yea, So
big business Josh, millions of dollars worth of goods each

(13:40):
year UH is imported and are imported, and they kind
of keep track of it the same way as they
do with individuals. They like, they can't inspect every single
thing or every single person, so they'll just kind of
pick and choose. I'll open up a cargo container and say,
I'm gonna look at these seven boxes in container eight,
and then the guy crosses his fingers that the cocaine

(14:02):
is not in those, you know gargo holds exactly. And
that's that's a deterrent in and of itself, the randomness
of it, all right. But at the same time, that
method means that tons and tons and tons of illicit
substances seep through our rather poorout border. And it's not
it's not just with big business too, it's individual travelers

(14:25):
as well. Like UM. Some countries use actual you know chance.
They leave it to chance who gets searched. So they
have people passing through their borders at their airports press
a random number generator and a certain number will trigger
a green light which means you keep going, and other
will trigger a red light that means you're going to

(14:46):
be your rectum is about to be probed, or instinct,
which is my favorite, when the they count on the
border agent to be the customs agent to be so
skilled that they can like eyeball you and say that
guy has something stuffed in a place that we should check.
Either that or the GDP of that country is so
low that they don't have enough money for a random

(15:07):
number generator. They rely on instinct, which comes with the salary.
That's a good point, Chuck. We we talked about illicit
substances cocaine, uh, marijuana, Um sure, So, like we were
just saying, the stuff is coming through all the time,

(15:28):
and Customs is aware of this. I don't know if
you knew this or not, but they know that they're
drugs coming across the border, and um, they have equipment
at their disposal right at the ports. We talked about
the random number generator. The US is fairly flushed with
with cash as far as UM customs go. So we
actually have truck size X rays that you can literally

(15:52):
they're big enough to drive a truck through at the
US Mexican border. Have you really you've driven through the
X ray before? What's it like? Were you inside? Uh?
What do you mean? Dangerous. Well, I means the same
as walking through an X ray, which is pretty dangerous.
But this is like a truck size X ray. Yeah,
good point. And din't really think about that. Yeah, been

(16:13):
over and across the border quite a few times. I
got you never carried anything unlicit. That's very smart, don't
you worry? Yeah? Um, we also have black Hawk helicopter
citation jets at our disposals. Cigarette boats, yes, for catching
cigarette smugglers. No, those are the super fast boats like
Miami Bice is it? Apparently the drug smugglers that come

(16:35):
in like undercover of the night, really fast. And so
the Coast Guard works in concert with the d e A.
It's a joint effort and customs agents. It's not a
joint effort, no it is. I just thought that was
a funny pun. Yeah, so they're looking for, you know,
bad things. And I looked up you know they mentioned
in here that people actually smuggle things in on their

(16:57):
person they'll go through customs instead trying to smuggle it
around customs, And uh, I thought they should have a
TV show called Smugglers Do the Darnest Things, because have
you ever seen I mean, I know you hear about
these stories from time to time. But the way that
these people trying to get drugs in the country, it's
crazy in their bodies. Remember the guy that made a

(17:18):
cast a foot cast out of cocaine. No, I hadn't
heard of that. I think we talked about them the webcast.
It was either that or we talked about they made
a dinet set. Like the plates and the bowls, we're
all made of cocaine. It's crazy. Uh. There was the
that was twenty kilow's of coke by the way, for
the dinner were. One thing they'll do is they'll put

(17:38):
it in a condom and feed it to their snake,
their pet snake, and then smuggle the snake in, which
I guess is easier than smuggling drugs. And I don't know.
That seemed like I wonder if people. I wonder if
the average customs agent is afraid of snakes like any
other person. Yeah, maybe so they figured that out. Frozen
sharks I saw her some I think it was Cambodia.

(17:59):
They had like forty frozen sharks and they were stuffed
full of drugs. Uh. And then the sad ones like
the when they smuggle them inside the dogs liquid heroin
inside the puppies. Remember that was a few years ago.
And then uh, this yellow lab had likety dollars worth
of cocaine and it's belly one time when they were
smuggling this dog in. It's a bad dog. He's a

(18:19):
good dog, bad people. Jerry slaughing again, So U how
how would you stop that? Though in an airport let's say, Well, again,
there's some the randomness of the whole thing serves as
a deterrent um two into intuition, as you said. And

(18:40):
dogs good dogs, not ones that are drug smuggling bad dogs,
but they kind of tattle on drug smuggling dogs. Good dogs.
Beagles specifically are good apparently not just for illicit drugs,
but especially for agricultural products. Apparently they're fine tuned to
sniff those out and bombs of course, which has nothing

(19:00):
to do with the customs. But I was actually in
I guess Atlanta. I don't know where I was coming
back from, but um, there was this cute little beagle
who walked up to this woman and just sat down
and looked up at her. And this customs guy was like, man,
we please come with me, and uh, turn out she
had fruit on her. Oh yeah, yeah, well you should

(19:22):
go ahead and mention that. Then well it's it's more
of a threat than you would think, right, absolutely. Um,
there's there's apparently a guy in the late eighties who
brought a piece of fruit, one piece of fruit back
from the Mediterranean and it was infested with Mediterranean fruit
flies and it contaminated and destroyed millions of dollars worth

(19:46):
of crops in California that year. That's crazy. One piece
of fruit. Have you ever driven into California? Uh? You got,
I've always flown in. Yeah, you gotta stop and they check,
they check your car. It's a real bummer too, because
when you make the Vegas to CA California trip, you're
coming back from Vegas and all you want to do
is get back to your house and sleep, and you
gotta stop at this It's always backed up for miles

(20:08):
and they you know, it's the fruit, it's the agriculture.
Stop really yeah, And they asked they either ask you
to you know, do you have any fruits, vegetables or seeds,
or they just eyeball you in your car and like
we'll wave you through or or say stop. They rely
on intuition. See if you like a pair smuggler. Yeah,
I always getting nervous. I don't know why. It's just fruit,

(20:29):
the drug, dogs, everything. They always make me nervous and
I never you know. Of course I don't have like
cocaine strapped on my belly, but it just makes me nervous. No,
I think that's pretty typical. And I think they make
everybody nervous. You know, you're being scrutinized, you know, and
nobody feels comfortable being scrutinized. Right, Or maybe it's a
the T shirt that don't scrutinize me T shirt. I

(20:51):
have one, right, I don't have drugs on me. Um.
Dogs also get taken onto planes, Chuck, I thought this
was kind of cool. Um, it's very roundabout, but it
makes sense. They'll take a dog onto a plane to
sniff around after everyone's disembarked, and if somebody had drugs
on him or her, uh, he or she would have

(21:11):
left some sort of trace on that seat, so the
dog will like, say the seat right here. They'll look
up on the flight manifest who is sitting there, find them,
and then take them to be thrown in prison. It
was Josh Clark, right, Black ghost to the sky. Uh.
The other cool thing too that we didn't mention was
the electro vacuum device. It's like a handheld dust buster

(21:33):
super dustbuster sort of, but it analyzes particles in the air.
So if you have cocaine packed in your suitcase, in theory,
there's probably some like residue floating in the air and
these things will sniff that out. Well, it's it's like
um poop, when you smell poop, it's an odorant. It's
an actual poop molecule that you're interacting with the same thing.

(21:57):
That's very good. What he just winked at me? What
else we got here? Oh, money's cash. You're not allowed
to take more than ten thousand dollars in cash out
of the country. But I would suspect that if you
had nine, then you're probably a little suspicious. I don't

(22:18):
know that for sure, or maybe that happens a lot
and and you're not suspicious. What do you think. I
think if if you're a penny over ten thousand bucks,
they know it. I think if you get anywhere near it,
or if you declared ten thousand dollars, they check you. Okay,
I never lived I mean I never have more than
like eight bucks on me anywhere US. Yeah, I've never

(22:40):
had ten thousand dollars in cash on me ever probably
never will of course not Chuck, you mentioned art. Customs
agents are also on high alert for antiquities, including once
you remember when we invaded Iraq there was a huge
cultural ransacking. Their museums were getting looted. I mean, you know,
ancient stuff is just being moved out of a rock, right, Um,

(23:05):
once it's in UM, I guess us borders there's that
doesn't necessarily mean you're out of the woods. There was,
um the example of customs finding a thousand year old
Chinese sculpture that have been stolen from a tomb in
turning up um on Christie's auction catalog. I guess they

(23:27):
monitor these, uh and then cross reference them, and they
found that it was going to be auction contacted. Christie said, hey,
we're gonna be taking that and give it back to China. Right,
So that's a that's something. Yeah. And this news story
I pulled from just a couple of days ago in Bulgaria. Yeah,
they at a border check between Calatina and Serbia. They

(23:52):
discovered four artifacts from third and second century BC and
first century a c. That we're wrapped in that kins
at the bottom of the suitcase. And the guy was like, Oh,
those are just drink it gifts for my family there
thousands of years old. So busted. Yeah, is he busted? Busted?
They didn't believe him. Uh No, they didn't believe him,

(24:14):
and they did some checking and they haven't like nothing
has turned up missing for museums or anything yet, but
I'm sure they'll get to the bottom. Mother. Um. Lastly, Chuck,
we were talking about bush meat. You were you you also, um,
you can't bring dog meat into the US. That's a
good thing, especially after two thousand when the US passed

(24:34):
the Dogging Cat Protection Act, which is the most adorable
act we've ever passed. I think it is. But sad
that we needed that. Yeah, well, none of it. Not
every country's you know, they don't look at dogs necessarily
the way we do. Yeah, it's a good point. You know,
some countries look at dogs the way we look at monkeys.
It's like meat, right, you know, Yeah, we prize them

(24:57):
for their fur kind of stuff. And think about that.
Oh another thing too, it's not always illegal stuff per se,
Like Cuban cigar. Sometimes it's just there's like an embargo
trade embargo. That's a really good example. But I mean,
don't you sence you regard Cuban cigars and what's the
same way you would drugs too, Just because it has
that stamp of forbiddness on it, it's it is, it

(25:19):
seems like highly illegal. You know, I'm on the internet.
Now I've heard that you can and and like they
send you the cigars and then like a week later,
in different package they send you the bands. The bands. Yeah,
I've heard of the I wouldn't know. I know, you
wouldn't show up kid like Switzerland or Sweden. You can
buy him from something like that. Uh. Well, if you

(25:40):
want to know more about customs, we have a lot
of articles on the side about it. I think if
you're just type in customs in the search part how
stuff works dot Com, it's gonna bring up, um, probably
all sorts of stuff things for Christmas, um, illegal border crossings,
that kind this stuff. There's one on US customs in particular.

(26:03):
UM And I said search bar right, which, as everyone knows,
is the automatic trigger for listener mail. Right, Okay, Josh,
this one struck us both pretty pretty well. Here from
Sergeant Walker in Afghanistan. Yeah, this is cool, This is awesome.
We love hearing from our men and women, servicemen and

(26:23):
women over there putting their lives at risk, and this
is a good one. Hello guys, my name is Sergeant
John Walker. I'm with the hundred and third Special Ops
Division in Afghanistan. I cannot give you a more district
descriptive location, he says. My platoon and I protect the
surrounding areas near schools so that children may achieve a
well rounded education. My life is not easy, but one

(26:45):
thing makes it all the better. Your podcast is the
thing that keeps me going strong out here. Every podcast
keeps me wanting more, and the next one comes out,
and so forth, so forth. I always have my iPod
on listening to you guys. And some of my platoon
asked what I was listening to all the time, so
I turned them onto it, and now they are at
least one hundred guys who use my computer to download

(27:07):
your podcast. How cool is that? It's cool, but it
doesn't stuff there, Like I said, with the children in
the school, Although some speak poor English, most speak the
local dialect of Farci. My friend and I have learned
a little bit of farcy and actually translate your podcast
for the older children to be able to understand it.
We don't do some like the large a drunk collider,

(27:27):
but more simple ones that they can understand and that
we can translate. We're expecting care packages soon. And I
asked my family for a camera so I could share
all of our happiness with you. I wish I had
something I could give back to you guys. And clearly,
Sergeant Walker, what you give us is mind and cool
emails and cool emails. Yes, so we wrote him back

(27:48):
and he's a he's a very cool guy. And he's
still over there and he's still safe. This came in,
you know, a little bit ago. Yeah, pretty cool. So
good luck to you, sir, Good luck, Sargeant Walker. Right, yes, um,
And if you have a cool email about translating our
podcast into some other language to help other people, we
want to know about it. Bet we don't get anymore. Uh.

(28:11):
If you have one, though, or if you just want
to say hi or something like that, you can email
checking me at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works? Dot com. Want more how

(28:33):
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