U.S. Customs and Border Protection is restricting international cargo at one Michigan port. Other Great Lakes ports don’t face the same restrictions.
The Port of Monroe is Michigan’s only port on Lake Erie. Besides handling material for factories on the Rouge River, it also takes in things such as wind turbine components.
Customs and Border Protection’s Detroit Field Office is restricting the port from handling international cargo unless it buys expensive scanning and radiation detection equipment. The Chicago Field Office does not have that same requirement for ports in the six Great Lakes states it covers.
The Detroit Field Office has portable scanning equipment which it uses in Detroit, but says it doesn’t have the resources to also scan cargo at Monroe.
U.S. Senator Gary Peters wants to know why the Michigan port is treated differently. He wants Customs and Border Protection to show him its internal review of the Port of Monroe to see why it’s being held to a different standard.
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