Photos posted on social networks by stranded passengers showed long lines at New York’s JFK and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson.
Other airports were also affected by the Monday outage which was eventually resolved at about 9:30 p.m. EST (02.30 GMT), the Guardian reported.
“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 travelers were screened according to security standards,” the Customs and Border Protection agency said in a statement.
A similar computer breakdown at US airports happened a year ago.
READ MORE: Nationwide Customs Computer System Outage Creates Chaos at US Airports
In January 2017, a computer glitch at several US airports left thousands of inbound international travelers stuck behind customs screening stations for about four hours until the system was finally up and running again.