Patriot Brief

• Charity care packages for deployed troops were returned or lost due to USPS customs issues.

• Over 800 boxes flagged for vague labeling despite clear military destinations.

• Charity leader appeals to Trump for intervention to deliver Christmas packages.

This shouldn’t be complicated. A nonprofit packs care boxes for deployed troops, marks them with military addresses, and sends them overseas — and somehow the system manages to screw it up anyway. Boxes to Boots didn’t violate the spirit of the law; they ran headfirst into a bureaucracy that values box-checking over common sense.

Yes, customs rules have tightened. Fine. But when hundreds of clearly marked military packages are returned without a single phone call — despite full contact information — that’s not enforcement. That’s indifference. And indifference hits especially hard when the people affected are troops spending Christmas thousands of miles from home.

Kristen Gauvin isn’t asking for special treatment. She’s asking for cooperation. Tell her what’s wrong. Let her fix it. Instead, boxes disappear, timelines evaporate, and morale takes the hit.

If there’s any role for executive intervention, this is it. Supporting deployed service members shouldn’t require a Christmas miracle — but right now, that’s exactly what it looks like.

From Western Journal:

The leader of the charity Boxes to Boots is asking President Donald Trump to intervene to save Christmas for troops stationed overseas and unable to return home for the holidays.

Each year, the Connecticut-based nonprofit puts together care packages filled with snacks, toiletries, and other comforts from home for the troops, Fox News reported on Wednesday.

This year, students from New Britain High School helped assemble a record of over 1,800 boxes, Kristen Gauvin, president of Boxes to Boots, told the news outlet.

Of these, the charity shipped over 1,100 overseas, while holding back 700 for Connecticut National Guard troops, whose deployment out of the country got delayed due to the government shutdown earlier this fall.

“Boxes to Boots mailed its packages in mid-November, yet more than 800 of its 1,100 boxes were unexpectedly returned, with more than 100 missing entirely. USPS flagged the packages for insufficient customs descriptions,” Fox News said.

All the boxes returned had the description “toiletries pack” circled on the customs form.

USPS told Fox in a statement, “We are currently investigating why these packages were returned. When customs forms are incomplete or lack the detail needed to meet export compliance requirements, packages may be returned.”

“Every single one of these boxes had my name and phone number on the return information,” Gauvin said in response. “Someone could have took the extra minute to call me and say, ‘Hey, we have a huge problem here. Let me tell you what it is.’”

“Clearly, these boxes are all marked with military addresses. So, I would think people, if anything, would bend over backwards for our troops. This is just disgusting,” she added.

Gauvin also noted that she has heard from four other nonprofits that have had similar problems shipping packages overseas.

“Something is clearly wrong this year,” she said.

“I’m really hoping that President Trump can perform a Christmas miracle for us and get these boxes to our troops for Christmas, because if we send them U.S. postal mail, they’ll never get there,” Gauvin said.

Nathaniel Rosenberg with The Middletown Press reported, “According to a spokesperson for USPS, U.S. Customs likely rejected the boxes because the labels were incomplete and did not provide sufficiently detailed descriptions of what was contained in the packaging.”

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