Customs Computers Restored After Nationwide Failure at Airports
Customs systems are down nationwide, several U.S. airports said on Twitter.
(Bloomberg) -- Entry for people arriving at airports across the U.S. began returning to normal Friday evening after a Customs and Border Protection computer system failed, forcing the manual processing of passengers on a busy summer travel day.
The system was being restored and passengers being processed, the agency said in a statement at 6:25 p.m. New York time. The failure was isolated to operations at airports, sparing other points of entry such as seaports or highway border crossings, according to the agency.
“CBP will continue to monitor the incident. There is no indication the disruption was malicious in nature at this time,” the agency said in a tweet.
Airports, including Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Los Angeles International, said in tweets late Friday afternoon that systems there were back in operation and passengers were being processed.
Seattle’s airport said the problem stemmed from the Federal Inspection Services’ computer system.
Customs officers at Dulles International Airport near Washington lost the ability to process passengers arriving from outside the U.S. at 3:18 p.m. local time, said Micah Lillard, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Passengers were being held in the International Arrivals terminal and “the line is beginning to build,” Lillard said.
Videos posted on social media showed the waiting area to go through customs at Dulles packed with thousands of people.
New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles International said in tweets that passengers were being processed manually during the outage, slowing entries.
At LAX, Customs brought in additional agents, mitigating the disruption, said Heath Montgomery, a spokesman for the city’s airport authority.
--With assistance from Sebastian Tong and Madison Park.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alan Levin in Washington at alevin24@bloomberg.net;Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net;Michaela Ross in New York at mross113@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sarah Kopit at skopit@bloomberg.net, Jon Morgan, John Harney
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