Smuggling definition
Smuggling is the illegal transport or concealment of goods or people to evade laws or customs regulations.
Smuggling refers to the illegal importation or concealment of goods or people in violation of laws or customs regulations.
What is goods smuggling?
Goods smuggling refers to bringing undeclared products into a country. People arriving in the US, whether citizens, residents or visitors, must notify authorities of the goods they are bringing with them by filling out a Customs Declaration. Attempting to import goods that must be declared by using false invoices or documents, or knowingly importing, hiding, selling, or helping move goods that were brought in illegally, can result in fines and/or detention.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enforces the laws regarding bringing prohibited or restricted items into the US. Prohibited items are forbidden by law from entering the US. Examples include dangerous toys, cars that don’t meet US safety standards, bush meat, and illegal drugs. Restricted items require special licenses or permits to import to the US. These include firearms, certain fruits and vegetables, plants, biological specimens, and pets.
What is human smuggling?
Human smuggling refers to illegally bringing foreign people into a country. Vulnerable people pay smugglers to get them into a country because they don’t have a legal immigration pathway. This can lead to violence, abuse, or extortion.
US law prohibits knowingly smuggling unauthorized immigrants into the country, and it can result in penalties including fines and/or imprisonment. US Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations investigates and prosecutes human smuggling.
Keep exploring
- What is ICE and what does it do? - Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, aims to preserve American safety by detaining, deporting, and sometimes, convicting unauthorized immigrants.
- What can the data tell us about unauthorized immigration? - The US has reported nearly 11 million unauthorized border encounters between October 2019 and June 2024.
- How does US law enforcement work? Who has jurisdiction? - Law enforcement in the US is a partnership between tens of thousands of agencies.
- How many people die crossing the US-Mexico border? - Fleeing violence and poverty, thousands of migrants from Central and South America make the long and dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States every year. Hundreds perish in the process.
