CAPE Phase 3 Is Open for IEEPA Refunds, but Only for Importers Who Sued

Updated October 8, 2026: On October 6, CBP opened the part of its refund system that handles finally liquidated entries affected by IEEPA. But it opened only for importers who sued at the Court of International Trade and got their importer of record numbers to CBP by July 30.

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On October 6, CBP opened the part of its refund system that handles finally liquidated entries affected by IEEPA. But it opened only for importers who sued at the Court of International Trade and got their importer of record numbers to CBP by July 30.

Everyone else with finally liquidated entries is still outside.

That shouldn't surprise anyone who read the government's appeal brief in August. DOJ told a federal appeals court it won't fight IEEPA refunds for importers who sued, and that it will keep fighting refunds for those who didn't. Here's where things stand now.

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CAPE Phase 3 is open, but the line is short and specific

CAPE, CBP's Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries portal, is how CBP processes IEEPA refunds. Phase 3 covers finally liquidated entries. Those are entries where CBP's duty calculation became final and the normal window to challenge it has closed.

CBP had originally targeted late July for this phase. It missed that target, then committed to October 6 in a September 15 declaration filed with the trade court.

According to an October 6 court filing, CBP had accepted 477 Phase 3 declarations covering 425,517 entries by launch day. This phase is expected to cover about $11.4 billion, roughly 6.9% of the IEEPA tariffs collected.

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Who actually gets in

Only plaintiffs with court-ordered reliquidation who submitted a valid importer of record number by July 30. Reliquidation means CBP recalculates the entry without the IEEPA duties and refunds the difference.

Plaintiffs who submitted their numbers after July 30 are waiting for further instructions, and CBP hasn't given a timeframe. So filing a case today doesn't put your entries into CAPE tomorrow. What a filed case does is put you on the only refund path that currently exists for finally liquidated entries.

Not sure whether your finally liquidated entries fall into this group? Call us at (602) 782-7841 and we'll walk through it with you.

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The government already told importers, in writing, why filing works

The appeal is V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, Federal Circuit Nos. 26-1895, -1897, and -1899, consolidated. It challenges Senior Judge Richard Eaton's April 17, 2026 orders requiring IEEPA duty refunds. The litigation traces back to his March 2026 order in Atmus Filtration, Inc. v. United States (CIT No. 26-01259).

DOJ's opening brief, filed August 10, does two things. First, it attacks the trade court's authority to order refunds for importers who never sued. Second, it says the government hasn't appealed the importer-specific reliquidation orders already entered for plaintiffs, and that it will comply with them.

The trade court has entered those orders in hundreds of cases.

Read that again. The government's own position is that importers who sued get their finally liquidated entries refunded. Importers who didn't sue are depending on an appeal the government expects to win. Phase 3 is that position put into practice.

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What the government is still fighting over

The open question is narrower than it sounds. It's whether importers who never sued can get the same refund on finally liquidated entries without filing anything themselves.

The government's argument relies on Trump v. CASA, Inc., the Supreme Court's 2025 decision that sharply limited universal injunctions. A universal injunction is a court order granting relief to people who aren't parties to the case. CASA arose from the birthright citizenship litigation. DOJ argues the trade court's broader refund order can't be reconciled with it.

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What's moving and what isn't while the appeal plays out

The trade court has held off on requiring immediate compliance with its broader order while the appeal is pending. In practice, non-plaintiffs' finally liquidated entries aren't being refunded right now.

The rest of CAPE keeps running. As of October 2, CBP reported about $136.6 billion in refunds accepted into CAPE and $126 billion sent to Treasury for payment. Those numbers come mostly from unliquidated and recently liquidated entries, not finally liquidated ones.

As of early October, the Federal Circuit hasn't ruled. This is the distinction our trade law team walks clients through: which entries are already covered by a filed case, and which depend on an appeal. Find out if your imports qualify for an IEEPA refund.

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The class action hasn't produced a fallback for non-filers

We previously flagged an August hearing in Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States (CIT No. 26-01088) on class certification. A certified class could eventually let some importers without CAPE access recover without bringing their own case.

That argument has happened. As of early October, we haven't seen a ruling.

We're not predicting how the court will rule, and neither should you. A pending motion isn't a refund path. For finally liquidated entries, an individual case is still the confirmed path.

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Keep your own records, because CBP's may not be complete

In August, Judge Eaton asked the government whether CBP has a protocol that could delete entry data for entries made between February 1, 2025 and February 25, 2026. We haven't seen a public answer.

If entry-level data is missing on the government's side, importers who planned to rely on CBP's records could struggle to prove what they paid. Our recommendation, whether or not you've sued: pull and keep your own copies of the Entry Summary Line Tariff Details report (ES-003) and the Courtesy Notice of Liquidation (ES-701). Do it for every entry you believe carried an IEEPA duty.

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Data problems are already slowing refunds

CBP told the court that Phase 3 was delayed partly to add checks that flag IEEPA duties reported incorrectly on original entries. Separately, CBP reported about 20,184 refunds, roughly $1.3 billion, held up as of September 11 because importers hadn't provided ACH banking information.

Neither problem fixes itself. Both are the kind of entry-by-entry detail that decides whether a refund actually arrives.

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What this means if your entries are finally liquidated and you haven't filed

Start with the entries themselves. Were any liquidated more than 80 days ago? Have you filed a case at the Court of International Trade?

If the entries are finally liquidated and no case is filed, Phase 3 isn't open to you. The CIT's window to hear these claims runs two years from when the duties were paid, and the earliest entries start hitting that deadline in February 2027. That's about four months away.

At Frost Law AZ, our attorneys handle this from the entry-by-entry data review through the CIT filing and the refund itself. We work alongside your customs broker, not around them. Not sure where your finally liquidated entries stand or how close your deadline is? Tell us what you're working with in the form below, and we'll give you a straight answer.