Importers rely on customs brokers to keep goods moving. Licensed brokers are essential to the importing process — they classify goods, prepare entries, submit documentation to CBP, and know how to navigate the day-to-day mechanics of getting shipments cleared. For routine importing, a good broker is exactly what you need.
But when CBP sends you a notice of penalty, a CF-28 request for information, a notice of action, or a seizure notice, you are no longer in routine territory. At that point, you are in a legal dispute with a federal agency — and the skills required to handle it well are not the same skills that make someone an excellent customs broker.
What Customs Brokers Do — and Where Their Role Ends
A licensed customs broker’s core competency is operational: preparing and filing entries, classifying goods under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, calculating duties, coordinating with carriers and freight forwarders, and ensuring shipments meet CBP’s documentation requirements. A skilled broker knows the entry process cold and can keep a high-volume import program running smoothly.
What brokers are not trained to do — and are not licensed to do — is provide legal advice or represent importers in adversarial proceedings. When CBP issues a penalty under 19 U.S.C. § 1592, initiates a seizure, sends a CF-28 or CF-29, or opens a focused assessment or audit, the matter has moved from operations into law. The federal regulations governing how CBP calculates penalties, what defenses are available, how prior disclosures work, what the statute of limitations is, and how to structure an offer in compromise are legal questions — not operational ones. Answering them incorrectly, or failing to raise the right arguments at the right time, can cost an importer far more than the original issue would have.
The Specific Situations Where a Lawyer Is the Right Call
CBP Penalty Notices Under 19 U.S.C. § 1592
Section 1592 is the primary penalty statute CBP uses against importers for material false statements, omissions, or acts in connection with an importation. Penalties are tiered by culpability: fraud carries penalties up to the full domestic value of the merchandise; gross negligence up to four times the unpaid duties or 40% of dutiable value; and negligence up to two times the unpaid duties or 20% of dutiable value. These numbers can be substantial. A skilled legal response — one that addresses the applicable culpability standard, identifies mitigating factors, and makes the strongest case for reduction — can dramatically reduce the final penalty amount. A broker responding to a § 1592 penalty notice without legal training is working without the tools the situation requires. See our page on 19 U.S.C. § 1592 penalties for a full breakdown.
CF-28 Requests for Information
A CF-28 is CBP’s formal request for information about an entry — typically classification, valuation, or country of origin. It looks routine, but it is often the first step in a penalty or audit process. How you respond to a CF-28 matters. An incomplete or poorly framed response can invite follow-up scrutiny, trigger a CF-29 notice of action, or establish a record that becomes difficult to walk back later. A lawyer can evaluate what CBP is actually asking, assess what the legal exposure is, and craft a response that addresses the inquiry without inadvertently creating new problems.
Notices of Liquidated Damages
Liquidated damages notices arise from bond violations — typically failures related to entry requirements, in-bond movements, or temporary importation conditions. The amounts demanded can be significant, and the process for contesting them involves petition practice before CBP’s FP&F office with specific legal standards governing mitigation. A liquidated damages response is a legal document, not an operational one, and it needs to be written and argued accordingly.
Prior Disclosures
If your company discovers it has been importing goods with incorrect classifications, undervalued entries, or other § 1592 violations, a prior disclosure to CBP can dramatically reduce penalty exposure — but only if it is done correctly and at the right time. A prior disclosure must be filed before CBP has formally commenced a formal investigation. Timing, scope, and framing all matter. A broker cannot evaluate when to file, what to include, or how to calculate the unpaid duties in a way that satisfies CBP’s legal requirements for prior disclosure treatment. Getting this wrong can eliminate the very benefit you were trying to obtain.
Protests and Duty Refund Claims
An importer who believes CBP incorrectly classified goods, applied the wrong duty rate, or made a valuation error has the right to protest CBP’s decision. Protests must be filed within 180 days of liquidation and must raise the specific legal and factual grounds for disagreement. A protest that simply says “we disagree with the classification” is unlikely to succeed. An effective protest cites the relevant HTSUS provisions, applicable CBP rulings, case law from the Court of International Trade, and General Rules of Interpretation — the kind of legal research and argumentation that is a lawyer’s core competency, not a broker’s.
CBP Audits and Focused Assessments
When CBP’s Office of Trade selects your company for a focused assessment or regulatory audit, the stakes are high and the process is adversarial in a way that routine compliance work is not. Auditors are looking for patterns of non-compliance that can generate large penalty claims across multiple entries. Having legal counsel involved from the beginning — not after CBP has already documented its findings — gives you the best chance of managing the process, understanding your exposure, and limiting the scope of any resulting enforcement action.
Can a Broker and a Lawyer Work Together?
Yes — and in many cases that is exactly the right structure. Your broker knows your entry history, your product classifications, your suppliers, and the operational details of your import program better than anyone. That knowledge is valuable input for building a legal defense. A customs lawyer can work directly with your broker, use their operational knowledge to inform the legal strategy, and take the lead on all communications and filings with CBP. The broker keeps the supply chain running; the lawyer handles the dispute.
What does not work well is asking your broker to handle a legal dispute because it feels like a natural extension of their role. Brokers who respond to penalty notices or information requests without legal training are, in my experience, frequently making avoidable mistakes — not out of incompetence, but because these situations require a different body of knowledge and a different type of reasoning than the work brokers are trained for.
Protect Your Business With a Customs Lawyer
Great Lakes Customs Law represents importers in CBP penalty defense, audits, protests, prior disclosures, and all phases of the customs dispute process. Jason Wapiennik has been handling these matters for more than 15 years and has worked with importers of all sizes across every major industry. If you have received a notice from CBP and are not sure whether you need a lawyer, the consultation is free — and it is always better to ask before the deadline passes than after.
Call us at (734) 855-4999, send a text message, or reach us on WhatsApp. You can also contact us online.