The Customs and Border Protection has told the Court of International Trade in a filing that 4.36 million entries failed its CAPE refund portal’s validation checks. The agency has separately certified $71.06 billion in IEEPA duty refunds across 18.1 million accepted entries.
A portion of the failed entries cannot be fixed by resubmitting them. Importers whose entries were finally liquidated more than 80 days before CBP’s refund clock started, mostly informal entries cleared at or near the time of entry, sit in a category CAPE is structurally unable to process.
Under the government's position in court, only importers who already filed suit at the CIT will receive refunds for those entries.
What's new: Phase 2’s actual results are messier than CBP's first estimated. The finally liquidated exclusion is now confirmed as CBP policy rather than a stated intention. The government’s appeal challenging refunds for non-plaintiffs now also has a formal docket number.
The gated bucket: The finally liquidated category is worth $11.4 billion, or 6.9% of all IEEPA duties collected. It is due for its own refund phase, Phase 3, in late July, CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner Susan Thomas told the court.
The Justice Department’s challenge to the CIT’s refund orders is now docketed at the Federal Circuit as No. 26-1898. DOJ argues the CIT can't order refunds for importers who never filed their own case, calling broader relief an impermissible “universal injunction.”
The government has not yet filed its opening brief, so the appeal’s outcome, and whether it narrows eligibility further, is still uncertain.
A fixable snag: Another 8,384 already-certified refunds are on hold because CBP does not have the importer's ACH banking details, a paperwork gap rather than a legal one.
The operator split: Entries that were finally liquidated early, often informal or low-value shipments, will not clear CAPE no matter how many times they're resubmitted.
Trade lawyer Jennifer Diaz wrote in her firm’s analysis: “The importers who recover the most will not be the ones who filed the earliest CAPE declaration. They will be the ones who correctly identified which of their entries CAPE was never going to reach, and acted on them separately, before the appeal foreclosed the option.”
Diaz also said filing at the CIT preserves a legal position. It does not guarantee a refund because the pending appeal could still narrow eligibility.
CBP’s Phase 3 refunds are scheduled for late July. Importers who haven’t filed at the CIT and are counting on a finally-liquidated refund arriving through CAPE alone currently have no path to recovery.
