How U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses AI

CBP runs an NLP chatbot named Leo on its careers website to help visitors navigate career resources, answer questions about roles and, where useful, direct them to a CBP recruiter or a recruitment event. The agency built it on Salesforce Einstein and lists it as deployed since September 2025. The 2025 federal AI use case inventory reports no measured outcome, such as an applicant volume or a conversion figure.

No outcome disclosed.

CBP's own entries in the U.S. government's federal AI use case inventory describe three machine learning models that score cargo shipments and the entities behind them. Illicit Trade, live since July 2023, scores inbound cargo shipments for the risk that they violate trade regulations and sends its results to the Automated Targeting System for review. Cargo Security Assessment Model, live since December 2011, returns high risk shipments for narcotics smuggling threats as a rule hit an officer reviews and can act on. Trade Entity Risk Model, live since July 2025, builds a risk profile for each importer, supplier and trading partner from historical transactions, relationships and compliance history and feeds that score into CBP's other threat models. All three draw on data from the Automated Commercial Environment, the system that carries import and export declarations.

No outcome disclosed.

CBP Translate assists officers and agents with immediate interpretation needs when a human translator is not available, deployed since August 2019. The tool outputs translated text or audio as chat bubbles, is accessible via mobile and web platforms, and is rated high impact under the federal AI use case inventory. No applicant, case or accuracy outcome figure is published.

No outcome disclosed.