Long queues at US airports as immigration computers go down

Two-hour outage for passport processing on Monday evening not thought to be malicious, authorities say

Immigration desk computers at various US airports went down for about two hours on Monday, causing long lines for travellers entering the United States, according to Customs and Border Protection and posts on social media.

The processing system outage began at about 7.30pm EST (00.30 GMT) and was resolved about 9.30pm EST (02.30 GMT), the customs agency said in a statement. All airports were back online after wait times for travellers that were longer than usual, it said.

“At this time, there is no indication the service disruption was malicious in nature,” the agency said. It gave no explanation for the disruption and said travellers were processed using alternative procedures.

In a statement posted to Twitter, the Customs and Border Protection agency said: “All airports are back on line after a temporary outage of CBP’s processing systems. During the disruption, CBP had access to national security-related databases and all travellers were screened according to security standards.”

Travellers entering the US from overseas posted photos on social media of long lines at John F Kennedy international airport in New York and at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport.

Other airports, including Denver international airport, also said they were affected. A similar computer outage occurred a year ago.

Reuters