The procedure for private (or charter) planes coming in from a foreign country is that they must file an FAA flight plan announcing their intentions, and their first landing in the US must be at an airport which has customs & immigration services open at the time of their arrival.
Many of the small airports near borders that are commonly used by bizjets and smaller will have a small ICE office staffed, say, 9-5 MF and half-days on weekends. Other small airports nearby won’t have ICE present.
Airplanes that try to sneak in get intercepted and sent a bill for the DoD’s services. And the pilot gets fined and/or loses his license. There’s actually more guarding of the borders than at first appears to the layman.
Can some smugglers slink over the border at very low altitude and drop drugs or people or whatever at some out of the way dirt strip in the New Mexico desert, or Florida swamp? Sometimes. But it’s not real easy.
Pre-cleared commercial flights are still required to land at an airport with a CBP office. It doesn’t have to be set up to regularly handle commercial flights, but it has to exist just in case they decide it needs to be checked again.
An airline actually forgot that rule once, and went as far as illegally flying several loads of passengers into an airport that wasn’t allowed to receive pre-cleared flights before the government realized it wasn’t allowed.
Except, when I have a stopover in the US first, I’ve used just my drivers license and the boarding pass for the first leg of the trip to get past TSA. I never see security again. They wouldn’t know that I was going overseas,* just that I went into an airport.
*Except for the fact that when I do go overseas, I register with the state department because in the event of an emergency, I want the US government to know how to find me.
What happens for e.g. Air Force people who are flying directly to a base? I imagine the guys who flew out of domestic bases to do bombing missions did not have to land at an international airport before returning to their base.
They also didn’t land in the foreign country they were bombing. So they weren’t “in” a foreign country for ICE purposes.
If you mean what happens when a USAF airplane leaves Overseas AFB and flies to BackInStates AFB, the answer is an ICE officer meets the aircraft at the AFB & does the inspections and processes the paperwork.
As a matter of security, not immigration, you’re required to present a boarding pass and either a passport or a US driver’s license / ID card. They have a scanner which reads the BP & checks with the airline’s computers to ensure it’s not a forgery.
They have a separate device which is just a UV light that they hold passports or driver’s licenses under to highlight the security features. Whether traveling domestically or internationally, somebody with a US driver’s license is under no obligation to show their passport at that point.
The airline does check passports before they issue an international boarding pass to a destination requiring a passport. That’s to avoid the fines they face for transporting somebody without the required travel documents to get into the country they’re arriving at. The airline also ends up providing free transportation back to the US for the now very disgruntled customer.
As mentioned tangentially here Cudjoe Key, Florida - Wikipedia , there are radars looking for both low flying aircraft and for boats. These are placed around the country in spots where geography makes smuggling a particular risk.
Although it is illegal, there is a place in Maine where Quebecers cross regularly to get cheap gas and cheap cigarettes and then come back without reporting to anybody. This area used to be in Canada, but moved as a result of new survey. That little hunk of Maine is still curturally part of Quebec and that gasoline and those cigarettes are delivered by bonded trucks since the only roads to that area come through Quebec and you cannot get to it from Maine.
When I drive from the US to Canada, I assume that the Canadian border service reports my leaving to the US. But they certainly didn’t used to. The one time I crossed the border from San Diego to Tijuana I didn’t see any Mexican agent, just walked through a turnstile and shopped for a half hour. But I certainly needed my passport to get back on foot.
From what I recall about private pilot training in Canada many many moons ago, flying to the USA you have to land at an airport that has customs people available to do immigration and customs inspection. Flying into some random little airstrip like you do flying from Kansas to Iowa or something is really a VERY bad idea. I suspect a flight plan is necessary. From what I was told (never had reason to try) a number of the general aviation airports within flying distance of the border are staffed that way or can arrange. Ditto, I understand, for small boats - looking like you are avoiding customs is a really bad idea. Not so bad for US citizens, they simply could earn a stay at Club Fed. Foreigners may encounter the same options and/or be turned away and never set foot in the USA again.
Of course you have to report even if a US citizen. One aspect of customs is to see if you are bringing stuff in and what it is, which applies to all arrivals.
Why would Canada care? I use my Canadian passport to enter Canada, and my U.S. one to enter the U.S. Why should either country be interested in notifying the other that one of their citizens has just left the other?
I once a while ago heard a news report about Point Roberts, WA (I think it was) which is a small western tab of US land by accident of geography only accessible through Canada. IIRC there was a gate in the fence that had a phone next to it, arrivals were required to phone and announce themselves when entering the USA; at one point a few years ago, the INS decided to be difficult (the polite expression) and locked the gate at 10PM each night. Bypassing that gate was a felony, so effectively these citizens had a curfew.
I can’t find anything online about this now, so I assume this problem has been fixed.
AFAIK, foreign countries do not routinely report the entry, departure, or movements of US nationals to the US government. This would be an enormous burden of record keeping. It has been routine for US nationals to evade the US embargo of Cuba by traveling through Canada, Mexico, or other countries. This would not be possible if other countries sent reports to the US. The only way the US really knows that you have been to another country is if your passport has been stamped (which is why Cuba does not stamp passports). Of course, if you were on a watch list or under surveillance things might be different, and if the US requested specific records other countries might provide them. But this is not standard.
There isn’t any master list of who is where at any given time. If that information becomes important, there is generally enough data between airline records, immigration and other systems to reconstruct the story.
I’ve at times held multiple passports with different numbers, and have switched between them for different legs of a trip. This hasn’t triggered any extra scrutiny and I doubt the discrepancy was noticed. I’ve also been to at least one non-computerized international border crossing that almost certainly wasn’t reported in any centralized way.
Compare that to China, where travel records are systematically reviewed. To give an example, travel to Tibet requires a ridiculously expensive (and sometimes hard to get) permit. More adventurous travelers sometimes try to hitch rides or walk in to avoid the permits.
So in areas where illegal crossings are common, authorities will look at hotel records (all hotels collect passport information on foreigners) and make sure there are no gaps where you might have slipped away.
My Dad & Mom took off from Mexico City in his 260 Comanche, went to 12,500’ in VFR conditions and flew non stop to Tulsa because they had favorable winds aloft. which allowed the fuel to make that range. Never talked to US by radio, no flt plan, no intercept, no questions. Other than crossing the border, there is no requirement to talk to anyone if you watch your airspace type I understand. ( Well, except for the border crossing & needing to get immigration checked. ) Why they got away with it I have no clue. I assume he had the transponder on 1200 ( if he had it on at all ) as that setting is what is used if you want. Not a requirement back then ( early 1980’s ) if VFR below 18,000. Today I don’t know how they could get away with it.