Two more years for the customs test where walking into the right queue counts as your declaration, and it still runs at one airport
The test runs at one airport.
Customs and Border Protection filed a notice on Tuesday extending its Air Declaration Zone Test through October 16, 2028, two years past the expiry it was heading for. The programme has operated since roughly August 2024 at a single air port of entry, Dallas-Fort Worth, and the agency states the reason for extending in plain terms: participation under the initial test was limited, and CBP wants to know how declaration zones would work at terminal types it has not yet tried.
There are three of those types, and the notice sets them out. At a standard facility a traveller clears primary inspection, collects luggage, and then gives an oral declaration or hands over Form 6059-B to an officer at the exit. At a modified egress facility the declaration is taken at primary inspection instead, and the traveller collects luggage and leaves without being stopped again. At a baggage first facility the luggage comes before primary inspection and the declaration is taken there.
The test replaces the spoken part with a decision about where to stand. Two queues are set up at the entrance to the egress area, one marked No Items to Declare and one marked Items to Declare, and entering one of them is what the notice calls a demonstrative initial declaration.
The legal effect is the part worth reading twice. If a traveller enters the No Items to Declare queue and is not questioned by an officer before leaving the egress area, the requirement to give an oral or written declaration under 19 CFR 148.12 and 148.13 is deemed satisfied for the purposes of the test. For every other traveller the queue choice supplements that requirement rather than standing in for it. Nothing else in subpart B moves. The provisions on failure to declare at 19 CFR 148.18, and on false or fraudulent statements at 148.19, apply whichever queue a person picks.
Officers still work the No Items to Declare lane. CBP describes roving enforcement operations inside the zone whose purpose is to affirm compliance, take oral declarations and make referrals to secondary inspection, so the lane is not an unattended exit.
The authority is a narrow one. Under 19 CFR 101.9(a) the agency may run a test that departs from its own regulations to evaluate new technology or operational procedures, provided the test is limited in scope, time and application, and provided the waiver does not affect the collection of the revenue, public health, safety or law enforcement. CBP states it does not anticipate any such effect, and it has written the evaluation to check that claim: the criteria are airline customer satisfaction surveys on the debarkation process, and a year-over-year comparison of enforcement statistics for each test period to confirm no impact on duty collection or on how often enforcement action is taken.
Expansion is discretionary and quiet. The notice says the test may be extended to other participating locations at CBP's discretion, and that any such expansion will be announced on cbp.gov, not in the Federal Register. Participating terminals have to help build and maintain the zones and the signage that directs travellers into them.
Comments go by email, to traveler-entry-programs@cbp.dhs.gov, at any point while the test runs. There is no new information collection, so the Paperwork Reduction Act does not apply.
