Why packages get flagged for secondary inspection

US Customs and Border Protection's process for selecting packages for secondary inspection involves both automated systems and human judgment. Understanding the triggers helps explain why some packages move through quickly and others sit for weeks.

Automated risk scoring

CBP uses an automated targeting system that assigns risk scores to incoming shipments based on multiple data points: country of origin, shipper history, declared value, declared contents, package dimensions relative to declared weight, and patterns across incoming shipments from the same shipper. Shipments above a threshold score get routed to secondary examination.

Specific origin countries have elevated baseline risk scores because of historical patterns. Packages from certain origin points are inspected at higher rates regardless of their specific characteristics.

Inconsistency triggers

Packages where declared value seems inconsistent with the declared contents attract scrutiny. A package declared as "greeting card" that weighs significantly more than a greeting card would typically weigh is an obvious example. The automated systems check weight-to-declared-content ratios as a basic consistency check.

Pattern matching

Packages from a specific shipper that has previously been associated with prohibited shipments will have elevated inspection rates on all subsequent shipments from that source. This is why vendor quality — including their shipping practices — matters beyond just card quality. A vendor whose packages have been frequently flagged creates elevated scrutiny for all their outgoing shipments.

Random inspection

A percentage of international packages are selected for random physical inspection regardless of risk score. These are truly random — no trigger other than the selection algorithm. Random inspection packages typically resolve more quickly than targeted selections because the inspection process is brief when nothing unusual is found.

Random selection accounts for a meaningful portion of secondary inspections and produces results that are genuinely not correlated with package content. The inspection process for random-selected packages is typically brief. Knowing that two categories of inspection exist — targeted and random — helps calibrate how much weight to give a secondary inspection notice. A random selection that clears in a day has different implications than a targeted hold that takes a week.