H.R. 1294 — BEST Facilitation Act

This section establishes the short title of the Act as the “Border Enforcement, Security, and Trade Facilitation Act of 2025” or the “BEST Facilitation Act.”

This section establishes an Office of Field Operations image technician pilot program within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under 6 U.S.C. § 211(g). It creates two new non-law-enforcement positions, Image Technician 1 and Image Technician 2, to be filled under title 5 competitive service, classification, and pay rules, and allows the positions to be filled by existing CBP employees but not by independent contractors. The technicians must be assigned to a regional command center established under subparagraph (F) and are authorized to review non-intrusive inspection images of conveyances and containers entering or exiting the United States through land, sea, air, or international rail ports of entry, assess images for anomalies indicating contraband, unlawfully entering or exiting persons, or illicitly concealed merchandise, and recommend release or further inspection to the responsible CBP officer. Image Technician 2 positions also receive intelligence from, and report tactics, techniques, and procedures to, the National Targeting Center regarding malign actors at ports of entry and in the border environment. The section requires all image technicians to be supervised by a Supervisory CBP Officer, who retains final authority to release or refer conveyances or cargo for further inspection and must receive additional training. It also requires annual and ad hoc training for image technicians on privacy, civil rights, civil liberties, image analysis, commodity identification, contraband detection, malign-actor tactics, and other duties-related topics determined by the Commissioner.

This section requires the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in consultation with the Executive Assistant Commissioner of the Office of Field Operations, to submit semiannual reports beginning not later than 180 days after the first hiring of the Image Technician 1 and Image Technician 2 positions established under section 411(g)(6) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and every 180 days thereafter, to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee on Homeland Security. The reports must identify: (1) the number of Image Technician 1 and Image Technician 2 positions filled during the reporting period; (2) the number of such positions currently employed, disaggregated by port of entry or field office, position, and command center, as applicable; (3) the daily average number of images scanned by each position; (4) training methodologies used; (5) assessment passage rates; (6) the impact of image technicians on interdiction rates at ports of entry and international rail crossings, including changes in throughput, wait times, average wait times, and seizures of contraband, persons seeking to unlawfully enter or exit the United States, or illicitly concealed merchandise, broken down by seizure type and location; (7) the impact on CBP’s ability to review non-intrusive inspection images of conveyances and containers entering or exiting the United States through land, sea, air, or rail ports of entry; (8) the effectiveness of image technicians in performing specified duties compared with CBP officers assigned those duties; (9) progress in establishing command centers under the pilot program; (10) infrastructure or resource needs to establish command centers; and (11) the ports of entry and international rail crossings supported by each command center. This section also requires the Executive Assistant Commissioner of the Office of Field Operations to provide biannual briefings to the same committees on the information contained in the most recent report.