These are the 'nightmare' queues in airports after nationwide customs system outage
We know it's called the "silly season," but this is ridiculous.
International travellers arriving in airports across the U.S. have been forced to stand in crazy-long queues, after a technical glitch affected U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operating systems on Monday night.
Twitter users were busy posting images of hordes of people in airport lines, while official airport handles thanked passengers for their patience.
Flyers were delayed at airport customs in Atlanta, Miami and Salt Lake City, according to CNN, while other outlets reported airports in Washington, Boston, New York City and Fort Lauderdale were also affected.
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If Twitter is anything to go by, Miami passengers seemed to have been affected the most dramatically, calling the incident a "nightmare."
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Customs officials confirmed the agency was experiencing a temporary computer outage, issuing a statement saying: "U.S. Customs and Border Protection is experiencing a temporary outage with its processing systems at various air ports of entry and taking immediate action to address the technology disruption."
Customs officers reportedly continued to process international travellers manually during the outage.
In Atlanta, a spokesman from the Department of Homeland Security's CBP agency, Rob Brisley, told CNN: "We can confirm that there was an outage with the processing computer that the customs officials use. It lasted about an hour at the Atlanta airport, causing delays with international passengers."
While Brisley said the cause of the outage was "still being evaluated," CBP have yet to give an official statement on the incident and what caused it.
Mashable has reached out the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol for further comment.
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Jerico Mandybur is the editor of Mashable Australia. Previously, she worked as a digital editor at SBS, Oyster Mag, MTV and ASOS. Tweet her at @jerico_m.
