In a move that would reshape how businesses move people and goods across the northern and southern land borders, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Monday, October 12, released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would require every rail carrier operating international service to transmit passenger and crew data to CBP at least 24 hours before a train reaches the U.S. border. CBP already receives Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) manifests from commercial air, cruise-ship and charter-bus operators, and, since 2019, has run a voluntary pilot with Amtrak and Canadian National for rail. The agency says the voluntary data feed helped it detect visa overstays, outstanding warrants and agricultural contraband before a train arrived, but that the pilot covers barely a third of daily rail travellers. Under the proposal, carriers would have to submit the same 42-field manifest used in aviation—name, date of birth, nationality, passport details, seat number, U.S. address, point of embarkation and so on—via a CBP-approved interface such as eAPIS or a proprietary system. Business-travel and supply-chain managers will recognise the parallels to the electronic advance cargo data (ACE) and pre-departure targeting that now dominate truck and container logistics. Security officials argue that rail remains the last common-carrier mode where CBP sees passengers only once they are physically at the border, a gap that “terrorists or other criminals could exploit,” according to the Federal Register notice. If finalised, the rule would primarily affect Amtrak’s cross-border services (Cascades, Maple Leaf, Vermonter, Adirondack and the Texas Eagle branch to Mexico) and private-sector excursion operators such as Rocky Mountaineer and Kansas City Southern de México. Railroads would also have to send a separate electronic notice of arrival or departure for each train. Failure to comply could trigger civil penalties of up to US $5,000 per traveller. Public comments are due by 14 December 2026. Most carriers say they can technically comply—many already collect passport data for ticketing—but want CBP to phase the rule in after peak-season timetables and to clarify how it will handle missed connections and last-minute manifest changes. Multinational employers with commuter flows between the United States and Canada or Mexico should begin mapping how employee data can be pulled from HR or duty-of-care systems into carriers’ booking interfaces, since the proposed 24-hour lock-in is far longer than today’s minutes-before-boarding procedures.
