If Your Entries Are Stuck in Phase 3, a CBP Recordkeeping Problem Just Made Your Case Harder to Prove

If your IEEPA entries were finalized months ago, you already know the drill. No lawsuit, no confirmed refund. That part isn't new.

What's new is this: even after you sue, proving exactly what you're owed may be harder than it should be, because the government's own records aren't always reliable. For Phase 3 entries specifically, that's not a minor inconvenience. It's the evidence your case runs on.

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Quick recap: why finalized entries need a lawsuit at all

Entries CBP finalized more than about 80 days before the refund process reached them fall outside the agency's normal administrative reach. CBP calls that group Phase 3, and the government's position is that those refunds go only to importers who filed their own case at the Court of International Trade.

CBP had targeted opening an administrative path for these entries by late July. That date came and went, and there's still no new one. Until that changes, a filed case is the only route with a court order behind it.

If you're not sure whether your entries fall into this group, that's the first thing to check. Call us at (602) 649-3887 and we'll tell you fast.

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The wrinkle: your case depends on records the government may not have kept intact

A CIT case isn't a form. It's litigation, and litigation runs on evidence: exactly which entries carried IEEPA duties, exactly what you paid, and exactly when each entry finally liquidated.

Normally, you'd expect to pull that from CBP's own system, specifically the ES-003 report (Entry Summary Line Tariff Details) and the ES-701 report (Courtesy Notice of Liquidation). Those are supposed to be the official record.

Here's the problem. A federal judge overseeing IEEPA refund litigation has directly asked the government whether CBP has protocols that could result in entry information being deleted. That question is still open. But if the answer turns out to be yes, even in a limited way, importers who never pulled and saved their own copies could be building a Phase 3 case on a foundation that shifted under them.

This is a bigger deal for Phase 3 litigants than for anyone else in the refund process, because you don't get a second administrative shot at these entries. The case you file is it.

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What this means if you're building, or already in, a Phase 3 case

If you've already filed suit, make sure your case file includes your own copies of the entry-level data, not just whatever CBP produces when asked. If those two versions ever diverge, having pulled your own record first is the difference between a documented claim and an argument about whose numbers are right.

If you haven't filed yet, pulling and saving your ES-003 and ES-701 reports now is no longer just good practice. It's part of building a case that can survive a dispute over the underlying facts, on top of the legal fight over whether you're entitled to the refund at all.

This is exactly where our trade law team gets involved early: reviewing your entry data before it's needed in litigation, not after a gap becomes a problem in front of a judge. Find out if your imports qualify for an IEEPA refund.

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The clock hasn't stopped for any of this

None of the recordkeeping concerns change the underlying deadline. The Court of International Trade's window to hear these claims still runs two years from when the duties were paid, and the earliest entries start hitting that wall in early 2027.

A documentation problem is a reason to move sooner, not a reason to wait and see how it resolves.

At Frost Law AZ, our attorneys handle Phase 3 recovery from the entry-by-entry data review through the CIT filing and the refund itself, and that data review now includes checking whether the record you're relying on still matches what you originally paid. Not sure whether your finalized entries are fully documented, or whether the clock is closer than it looks? Tell us what you're working with in the form below, and we'll give you a straight answer.