CAPE Phase 3 Has a Date: October 6, 2026. Who Can File for Finally Liquidated IEEPA Refunds, Who Has to Wait, and the $1.3B Still Stuck on Bank Details

CAPE Phase 3 Has a Date: October 6, 2026. Who Can File for Finally Liquidated IEEPA Refunds, Who Has to Wait, and the $1.3B Still Stuck on Bank Details

Two weeks ago our September status check said CAPE Phase 3 — the piece of the IEEPA refund program that handles finally liquidated entries — was delayed with no new date. It now has one. In a declaration filed with the Court of International Trade on September 15, 2026, Brandon Lord, Executive Director of CBP's Trade Programs Directorate, told the court that Phase 3 of the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) functionality deploys in ACE on October 6, 2026.

That is real news for the importers whose entries liquidated more than 180 days before the Supreme Court's February decision and who have been told, correctly, that there was no system to put them through. But the date is narrower than the headline. Phase 3 on October 6 is open to a specific population — plaintiffs covered by a CIT reliquidation order who had a valid importer-of-record number on file by July 30 — and the Justice Department's appeal over who is entitled to a finally-liquidated refund at all is still pending. This article covers what the declaration actually says, the three populations it splits importers into, what to do before October 6, and where the money sits today.

What the September 15 declaration says

The filing is in the *Freestyle World, Inc. v. United States* docket at the CIT, the case that has become the running status channel for the refund program. The operative points:

• Deployment date. Phase 3 CAPE functionality goes live in ACE on October 6, 2026. CBP had previously targeted the end of July for this phase and missed it; the August 25 status report gave no replacement date. This one does.
• What Phase 3 handles. Finally liquidated entries filed by plaintiffs for which the CIT has ordered reliquidation. Phase 3 is the mechanism, not the authority: the court orders reopen the entries, and CAPE is the system that processes the resulting reliquidation and refund.
• Who can file on day one. Eligible plaintiffs who submitted a valid importer-of-record (IOR) number to CBP by July 30, 2026 may file Phase 3 CAPE declarations beginning October 6.
• Who has to wait. Plaintiffs who submitted their IOR number after July 30 will receive additional instructions from CBP. The declaration gives no timeframe.

Reporting on the earlier delay put the Phase 3 population at roughly $11.4 billion, about 6.9% of all IEEPA duties collected — the smallest of the three phases by dollars and by far the most legally contested.

The three populations, and which one you are in

Every importer with finally liquidated IEEPA entries falls into one of three groups on October 6. Work out which one before you do anything else.

The third row is the one to be honest about. The Justice Department has appealed the CIT's refund order as it applies to finally liquidated entries, arguing the court lacks jurisdiction to order universal refunds on entries that reached finality and that the order reaches only parties who actually sued. Phase 3 as described in the declaration is built around plaintiffs and court orders. If you never filed, the October 6 date does not open a door for you — it confirms that the door CBP is building is for people with a judgment in hand. Whether that door widens depends on the Federal Circuit, not on ACE.

The pre-October 6 checklist

For the first population, the two weeks before deployment are for getting the filing right the first time. CBP has now processed roughly 27 million entries through CAPE, and the pattern from Phases 1 and 2 was that clean declarations moved and messy ones sat.

1. Match every entry to the order. Phase 3 processes entries *for which the CIT has ordered reliquidation*. Pull the order (or orders) covering your case and build an entry-by-entry list that ties each finally liquidated entry number to the order that reopens it. Entries outside the order's scope will not process, and an over-inclusive declaration is the fastest way to a rejection.
2. Confirm the IOR number CBP has is the one on the entries. The July 30 cutoff is about a *valid* IOR number submitted to CBP. If your entity has had an IOR number voided under the September 18 Form 5106 enforcement, or if entries were filed under a subsidiary's number, fix the record first.
3. Put ACH on file in the ACE Portal. This is the single largest reason certified refunds are not being paid (see below). The importer of record, or its CBP Form 4811 designee, needs valid bank details in ACE before Treasury can transmit anything.
4. Reconcile the duty actually paid on each entry. IEEPA duty is usually one of several lines on a liquidated entry. The refund is the IEEPA piece, not the whole duty bill. Have the entry summary, the liquidation notice and the payment record per entry before the declaration is built. The tariff refund calculator estimates the IEEPA-only portion for an entry when you know the value and the stacked rates that applied.
5. Decide who files. Brokers can build the CAPE declaration; the litigation position belongs to counsel. For a court-ordered reliquidation, both should be looking at the same list before October 6.

Importers reconciling hundreds of finally liquidated entries against supplier invoices and broker entry summaries often run the classification and duty math per line through software such as Zonos before the declaration is assembled. (Disclosure: this is an affiliate link — FreightFigures may earn a commission if you sign up, at no additional cost to you. See our full affiliate disclosure.) Anything headed to the CIT should be reviewed by customs counsel, not automated.

Where the money is as of September 11

The same declaration updated the program totals, and the trend since the August 25 report is the story:

Two things stand out. First, $15 billion moved to Treasury in three weeks, which means Phase 1 and Phase 2 are now largely mechanical for importers whose paperwork is clean. Second, $1.3 billion is still sitting at CBP because 20,184 refunds have no bank account to go to. That number fell by only about $400 million since August. If you are owed money and have not seen it, the ACH check in step 3 above is the first place to look — it costs nothing and it is the one part of this program entirely within your control.

What the timing means for Q4

For plaintiffs in the first population, an October 6 filing with clean data puts a refund on a Phase 1-style trajectory: weeks, not months, once the declaration is accepted. For a company that paid six figures of IEEPA duty on entries that liquidated in 2025, that is cash arriving in the same quarter it has to fund peak-season inventory, the November 10 Section 301 exclusion snap-back and whatever comes out of the September 24 summit.

The practical advice is the same one Baker Tilly's Pete Mento gave on LinkedIn the day the declaration was reported: read the eligibility requirements before telling the CFO to spend it. Litigation status and the applicable court orders decide whether October 6 is your date. If they do, the checklist above is how you make sure the refund is not one of the 20,184 stuck for a missing routing number.

If the refund is real and you are already planning what it funds, the freight side of that plan is where FreightFigures can help. Cate Freight quotes ocean, air and drayage on the lanes most of this cash will go back into, and the landed cost calculator shows what the same order costs to bring in under the tariff stack that replaced IEEPA.

FAQ

What is CAPE Phase 3? The stage of CBP's refund system that handles finally liquidated IEEPA entries — entries that liquidated and passed the 180-day protest window, so the only route to a refund is a court-ordered reliquidation. It deploys in ACE on October 6, 2026.

Who can file on October 6? Plaintiffs covered by a Court of International Trade reliquidation order who submitted a valid importer-of-record number to CBP by July 30, 2026.

I am a plaintiff but my IOR number went in after July 30. What happens? CBP says it will provide additional instructions. No date was given in the September 15 declaration.

I never sued. Does Phase 3 help me? Not as described. Phase 3 processes entries reopened by court orders for plaintiffs. Whether non-plaintiffs with finally liquidated entries are ever refunded depends on the Justice Department's pending appeal.

How much has been refunded overall? As of September 11, 2026, about $134.7 billion in potential and certified refunds had been accepted into CAPE and $122 billion had been sent to Treasury for disbursement.

Why has my certified refund not arrived? The most common reason is missing ACH bank details in the ACE Portal. As of September 11, 20,184 refunds worth about $1.3 billion were held for that reason alone.

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