The 2024 Forced Labor Crackdown: The UFLPA’s New Targets and Emerging Enforcement Trends

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which prohibits U.S. businesses from importing any goods that can be sourced back to the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China or any company participating in the country’s state-sponsored forced-labor programs, is moving into a new phase. 

Dating back to the earliest months following its initial implementation in 2022, there has been vigorous bipartisan support for expanding its scope of enforcement. At the same time, research institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ranging from Human Rights Watch to Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice have continued to carry out investigations and publish revelatory research identifying new commercial threads leading back to China’s sweeping forced-labor operations in Xinjiang. This research has exposed troubling, systemic connections between the XUAR and some of the world’s largest industries, transforming the way we think about global supply chains and the degree to which they are inextricably bound up in longstanding, institutionalized human rights violations. 

In large part because of these developments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have begun to ramp up their UFLPA enforcement efforts in 2024. The results have been exceedingly evident throughout the U.S.’s 328 ports of entry. 

Changes include:

• A substantial increase in both the frequency of detainments and the total value of shipments detained
• An expansion of CBP targets beyond the initial high-priority sectors such as apparel
• A slew of new products and materials being stopped by the agency and subjected to UFLPA review

Taken together, it all adds up to a busy few months for the UFLPA. If they are an indicator of what companies can expect for the rest of the year, 2024 will likely see an escalating crack down on forced labor in American supply chains. 

Notable Trends In UFLPA Enforcement in 2024 Q1 

In the months following the regulation’s initial rollout in June 2022, Customs and Border Protection was relatively restrained and incremental in its enforcement approach. Over the first six full months that the UFLPA was effective, CBP detained around $750 million worth of shipments. Fast-forward to 2024, and the agency has grown far more aggressive in their detainments. Through the first quarter of the year, CBP has stopped over $800 million worth of imports under the UFLPA—a figure that represents a near-threefold increase compared with the same time span a year earlier. The last month for which there is publicly available data, March 2024, saw the single-highest value of detainments for any such period since the law entered into force (February came in a close second).

A second important trend worth paying attention to is CBP’s increasing focus on electronics. While the sector has been prioritized by FLETF since the law’s early stages, it has grown into a disproportionately large target this year. Of the $830 million worth of imports detained by CBP in January, February, and March, nearly 94% have come from the electronics industry. While a wide breadth of reporting over the past year would suggest that many of these detainments are for solar energy modules and equipment—the industry sources a substantial portion of its polysilicon from Xinjiang—it also appears increasingly clear that CBP is broadening its focus to other electronics products. 

Widening the Scope of the UFLPA: Beyond Polysilicon, Cotton, and Tomatoes

When the UFLPA first became effective in the summer of 2022, FLETF identified three high-priority sectors: polysilicon, cotton, and tomatoes. In the nearly two years since, CBP has largely adhered to those prioritizations, with electronics, apparel, footwear, and textiles, and agricultural products accounting for over 70% of the total detainments. A raft of evidence over the past year or so, however, suggests that the agencies presiding over the UFLPA are intent on broadening enforcement and bringing new products into the law’s scope.

Last summer, in an updated report to Congress, DHS and its interagency task force explained that they would be working closely with NGOs and academic research centers to stay abreast of new “potential risk areas” for participation in China’s forced-labor schemes. These included aluminum, steel, vinyl products, batteries, copper, tires, and other automobile parts. While the report suggested that they would be “monitoring” these products for exposure to forced-labor, it was also arguably offering a glimpse into the evolving strategy and focus of the UFLPA. 

Further confirmation of CBP’s expanding purview can be seen in the agency’s detention notices. These forms are intended as guidance for importers on what kind of documentation they’re required to submit to release a shipment detained under the UFLPA, and include guidelines for specific goods subject to the regulation. The notice has been updated multiple times to reflect CBP’s expanding enforcement, and now includes aluminum, steel, batteries, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) products, and auto tires. While these new product categories have yet to be prominently reflected in official UFLPA enforcement statistics, the agency appears to be laying the foundation for following through on the potential risk areas outlined in the 2023 report. 

More Expansive UFLPA Enforcement Is Imminent 

Looking beyond the first few months of 2024, several recent events may be foreshadowing an even more robust enforcement of the UFLPA over the second half of the year. 

This past March, Congress passed an appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security that included a few telling funding increases. First, DHS received an additional $20 million over the previous year’s budget for the purposes of combating forced labor at U.S. ports of entry. Congress also allocated over $420 million for CBP’s Office of Trade, a figure that exceeded the agency’s request by over $10 million. The bill explicitly stated its intention that these additional funds be used to “restore proposed cuts to CBP’s combating forced labor activities.” Finally, $20 million was earmarked to CBP specifically for the hiring of 150 new officers. Subtle though they may be, these financial injections into DHS and CBP are clear-cut expressions of the federal government’s interest in empowering the agencies to scale up UFLPA enforcement and subject more industries to the law’s scrutiny. 

Around the same time earlier this year, CBP held its Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit for an audience of professionals in Philadelphia. During the conference, Laura Murphy, a Department of Homeland Security policy adviser who previously served as a professor of human rights at Sheffield Hallam University—a major source of forced-labor information for DHS and FLETF—spoke during a panel. Discussing CBP’s UFLPA Entity List, she outlined, in no uncertain terms, the agency’s plans to act aggressively in banning more Chinese companies from exporting merchandise to the U.S. “We’re really focused on enhancing and expanding the entity list,” Murphy said. “We expect many more entities to be coming in the next few months.” 

While these developments hardly constitute major milestones in the history of the UFLPA, they do serve as meaningful signposts for where CBP’s enforcement of the law is headed through the remainder of the year and into 2025. The agency’s publicly available statistics provide irrefutable evidence that the first quarter of 2024 saw record levels of UFLPA detainments. The funding, messaging, and general discourse coming out of Washington, meanwhile, strongly suggest that the expansionary trend is set to continue with few headwinds—and perhaps even greater velocity.