U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the Baltimore Field Office recovered 307 stolen vehicles at seaports between Philadelphia and Norfolk, Virginia, during fiscal year 2025, a 23 percent increase over the previous year’s recoveries. The total value of these recovered vehicles was $14.5 million, according to a July 15 statement from CBP.
The Baltimore Field Office oversees an area stretching from Trenton, New Jersey, to the Virginia–North Carolina state line and includes major commercial seaports in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. This region is CBP’s second busiest for recovering stolen vehicle exports after the New York Field Office.
Nationally, CBP officers saw a slight increase in stolen vehicle export recoveries last year despite a reported 23 percent decrease in auto theft across the country to its lowest level in decades. Officers recovered 1,251 stolen vehicle exports in fiscal year 2025 compared to 1,244 such recoveries in fiscal year 2024.
Matthew Suarez, Acting Director of Field Operations for CBP’s Baltimore office, said: “Auto theft victimizes our nation’s citizens, dealerships, and rental companies, and Customs and Border Protection officers remain committed to combating transnational criminal organizations who are profiting on the international trade in stolen vehicles. We want to make this perfectly clear: our seaports are not gateways for criminal organizations to export stolen vehicles or other illicit products.”
CBP uses a multi-layered enforcement strategy that includes analytics, intelligence gathering, non-intrusive imaging of shipping containers destined for overseas markets, and officer expertise on site. Officers rigorously examine exports by scanning containers to ensure documentation matches contents; they compare vehicle export documents with identification numbers; and they query law enforcement databases for links between VINs and reported thefts.
When officers identify a stolen vehicle intended for exportation abroad or already loaded into shipping containers at ports within their jurisdiction—including Philadelphia through Norfolk—they coordinate with partner law enforcement agencies either to initiate new investigations or add information to ongoing cases. Officers also work with lawful owners—registered owners or insurance companies—to return recovered vehicles.