Passengers arriving into the country at Miami International Airport faced immigration lines stretching up to six hours long on Saturday evening. Video shows the line just to get into the immigration hall.
American citizens have a right to return to their country. At some point that right is being abrogated. Meanwhile, this is the first experience with the United States for foreigners visiting. Connecting passengers are missing their flights. U.S. Customs and Border Protection owes everyone an apology for failing to properly staff and process incoming passengers – and owes a fix so that this doesn’t repeat. While six or more hours’ wait is extreme, hours-long waits were reported earlier in the week, too.
Line to get to PASSPORT CONTROL at MIA ✈️ ♂️| #ONLYinDADE
*Airport customs officials mentioned it could be a 6 hour plus wait. Would you wait, or turn around and leave? ♂️ pic.twitter.com/OrJRe99Ybf— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) April 21, 2024
Maybe Alejandro Mayorkas should have been impeached over this instead?
If only those people flew to civa and took a boat to the keys they would have gotten free rent food education and health care. Same goes if they walked over the border from Mexico
The great irony is that people can walk freely over the southern border. Arrive by plane and CBP are very fastidious about proper procedures.
Get use to it, and maybe get Global Entry. Only going to get worse as time goes on and more and more people travel.
Complain to Biden and other elected officials about hiring 20,000 or so more CBP Officers for around the country to properly staff the border and airports and seaports.
Go to Texas they will fast track you to nyc for free
Folks, can we please leave politics out of this…just once? The issues at the southern border have absolutely nothing to do with passengers arriving at a major U.S. international airport.
Gary:
For U.S. citizens, I’m guessing this was the non-Global Entry line?
This is why everyone should have Global Entry (or at least Mobile Passport which is free and, while not at quick as GE is much quicker than those without it). Also, I always plan to get a hotel room and stay overnight when arriving from a long international flight. Then I get up and fly home the next day. Just like when you do a positioning flight on another airline or fly to a departure city for a cruise. Be there the day before if at all possible. Building a day into the travel plans greatly reduces any stress you may encounter with delayed flights, long immigration lines, etc. IMHO planning a connection for an international flight (either departing or, more importantly, arriving back in the country) is a rookie mistake and they will learn next time.
You are trapped, you can’t turn around because there is no way to leave without going through immigration. When you do eventually get through, there will be a similar line at TSA for connecting flights as they only have two checkpoints coming out of immigration. Then when you have missed your flight, the airline does not have to give you a room or meal as it was not the airline’s fault. You will be placed on standby for a new flight. At that point, it may just be faster and easier to rent a car or rebook at either FLL, WPB, or MCO and take Brightline to get there.
I’ve sat on tarmac in Charlotte because a plane came in early.
There is an ongoing dispute between airlines and border security. No one is willing to fund overtime so if planes come in before start time of agents, you wait on planes
I’ve landed at Terminal 7 at JFK and the line for customs extended all the way to the jet bridge. Even if you have Global Entry, it doesn’t do you much good in such a situation. More proof that government can’t do anything right and we would all be better off if these functions were privatized.
That looks like the immigration/customs line at Marrakech in Morocco. 10 years ago.
Clearly a third world problem. Except Miami is in the great old U.S. of A.
Party in the city where the heat is on and the lines to get in are 6 hours long – Bienvenedos a Miami!
People make fun of my long layovers or my flying in the night before an early morning long haul, but issues like this are why. A couple of years ago I got caught in a 3 hour security line while every food object was swabbed. People were crying in line as they missed their connecting flight. Fortunately I had a 6 hour layover. As much as I would love to fly ANA or JAL to Tokyo the cities are far away from my home. If something goes wrong at ATL inbound there is a luxury bus departing every 90 minutes to my home airport and I’ll get my luggage later.
Unless Global Entry is shut down, which seems doubtful, this is why you get Global Entry. I’ve walked past many a long line. Maybe I miss my connection because bag delivery is slow and/or the plane is late, but it’s not going to be because I’ve been standing in line for an hour, or six. GE (with the added bonus of TSAPre) is the biggest bargain in time saving in the world of travel.
How many of those people would gladly slap a $100 bill on the table to skip that line.
Agree about Global Entry, I just renewed mine and the form took about 30 minutes, I paid the fee and the approval came in a few hours. But I also agree about allowing a lot more time. And hopefully no one going to Miami was connecting to a cruise ship! There allowing a day buffer (or at least a good 12+ hours minimum) is a wise move.
@H2O … Well said . I am disabled and it is easier for me to lay over 1 night at Narita , at Nikko Narita hotel , although formalities there are easy , simply to avoid a rush . Honolulu , same-same .
A disgrace and embarrassment. There is not other place on earth that comes close to this in my experience except maybe Manila T1 which can be 1 hr max.
Go to Dubai, Singapore or even Frankfurt and see what it COULD be like.
Bunch of morons. Takes all of 60 seconds to download Mobile Passport. Free and simple to use.
@TravelWarr, thank you. So tired of these people bringing in an irrelevant political agenda.
This is gross incompetence which merits job consequences for those responsible. For many travelers Global Entry is a solution, but many can’t avail themselves of it. I have visited several so-called “third world” countries in recent weeks. All have been way more efficient and competent than what you describe here.
I wonder if more people request wheelchair assistance for these long lines.
Thanks to that article this is the first time I hear of Mobile Passport !
Does anyone if that would have changed anything in that particular case ? Were all those people waiting before or after the line separation between Global Entry/Mobile Passport and the rest ?
If not, are people going till the front of the line to try to skip and go to the favoured lines or do they wait to be sorted?
Nobody is being denied a right to return. Stop being a drama queen. So it takes longer in this ONE instance.
I’ve been held up in many a 3rd world country. Want fun, try the line from Egypt to Israel or vice versa It happens.
Global Entry is now $120. What if you use your passport for only one or two trips? Say, if you knew in advance that trip 1 would have a wait of 15 minutes and trip 2 would have a wait of 6 hours. Would you pay $20/hour? What if you did not have a connecting flight?
There are some places with HOV lanes that accept tolls from cars with only one person. One state figured people’s time was worth $20/hour because the minimum wage was $15. It turns out that the 4 toll lanes are not close to being full and the 6 free lanes are backed up. People don’t want to pay $5 to save 15 minutes. That state is thinking of raising tolls even higher because they are not meeting projected revenues. What the state should do is to lower tolls. That’s what stores do when people are not buying.
Meanwhile I just flew through Panama from the U.S., connecting internationally, with a 38-minute connection and made my flight with time to spare.
The worst part of this is that they know exactly how many people are landing every hour and they even know how many are US citizens. It isn’t like it is a surprise. This is just incompetence. The same thing with airport security. They know exactly how many people are coming through based on flight schedules and how many people have PreCheck.
I’m sure it was because of an abundance of caution. (Vomiting noises stage left, off)
This isn’t a government employees vs. privatization issue. It’s MIA, which is a very high volume international hub for air and sea travelers. I just returned from the EU via SFO and at prime time the regular line was about 45 minutes. We made it through Global Entry in about 3 minutes. The border control employees were all very efficient and pleasant.
Even if you can manage to hire and train 20,000 more employees (public or private), there’s still the problem that some airports don’t have the space to accommodate surge times that are scheduled by the airlines and not the CBP. Those airports don’t have space to add passenger lines, control gates, booths for the officers, secondary screening facilities, or parking lots, training facilities, locker and break rooms, and restrooms for more employees.
Over the last 3 months, we have been traveling extensively in North and South America, Africa, and Europe. We thought it would be great to travel before the summer rush. But every place we visited was already loaded with tourists. It looked like the summer of 2019, but moved up to March. It’s crazy how many people are traveling. So please schedule longer layovers than you expect this year. We never want anything less than 3 hours when arriving in the US. If that’s not possible, then we plan an overnight at an airport hotel and fly home the next morning.
Miami….lol worst shithole north of the border ….well, after nyc and la
We have seen exactly the same problem at London Heathrow on a number of occasions.
Between the D & J immigration points MIA has boatloads of lanes for non GE and MPC arrivals. C&BP definitely drop the ball in this instance.
I’ve entered at MIA 4 times this year with Global Entry, never saw anything like this, I was through as quickly as I could walk, no wait, anywhere, just had to pause to show my phone entry approval to the CBP agent. Surely it is an anomaly. Some readers made valid comments. The economy is booming and everyone in the world wants to come to South Florida, whether for pleasure, economic or political reasons, so everything is full, year-round. MIA doesn’t have the square footage to facilitate so many entries at one time; realistically, that’s not going to change, so either an enlargement of the facility is required or limits put on airlines’ international arrivals. As far as what a customer can do, don’t travel at peak times, and especially not on a Saturday evening into Miami.
I just flew back on Saturday to MIA from Santiago, Chile. Used the Global Pass line with no wait. Best $100 (now $120) ever spent.
This has nothing to do with CBP as a whole and everything to do with MIA. The entire airport is a dumpster fire and should be leveled and put under new management. It’s amazing they can even find anyone to work there given the conditions. As to CBP in MIA they are the nastiest at any port of entry into the U.S. I would say this is more a product of the working conditions they have to deal with. It’s a rat infested dump with thieves everywhere and corruption within. An absolute embarrassment.
The US government doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about the long lines. Their attitude is simply get in line and shut up, you insignificant peons.
We transited through MIA from Buenos Aires earlier this year with Global Entry. The lines were bad after cleaning customs, 2+ hours to clear security with no line for Pre-check. Last year, same trip, 1 hour wait. I will do everything possible to avoid MIA and JFK.
I flew to Singapore in February and it took less than 5 minutes to go through passport control (didn’t even see an agent as all electronic by scanning passport and taking a photo). Bag was out in 10 minutes (from a Airbus 350). Incredible process and welcome after flying 18 hours. Technology could greatly improve this but wonder if pushback from government unions (worried about layoffs) and ongoing issues with government upgrading technology (FAA is years behind the overall tech industry – think they still have vacuum tubes in some equipment) are the culprit.
Entering the US is a miserable experience – not just the absurd waits, but also the surly, rude and aggressive CBD officers. It’s an extremely poor first impression of the US
Correct me if I’m wrong – each airline ticket includes ‘airport fees’. Presumably a slice of those $$$ goes to TSA. And again, presumably, to man the incoming passengers.
I just wonder where that airport fee goes.
As a South Florida resident, I can testify that MIA is a massive dumpster fire and second the motion the entire airport should be leveled to the ground.
Maybe we can get President Joe Biden down here and have him declare MIA a “third world airport” ? Look what that did to get LGA back in shape !
Ron deSantis and his Miami Cuban friends are in charge of the airport and all Florida’s policies.
Almost as bad as JFK…
Everything is political!
I landed in Punta Cana and the airport was gorgeous and almost everyone in security, customer service and immigration spoke English.
I landed in Miami and everyone spoke Spanish
The other sad thing is that a layover time is usually maxed at 4 hours. Otherwise, the airlines can consider the layover/connection as two separate flights. That would increase the travel costs significantly. Force majeur events (such as TSA or CBP issues) are not covered by the airlines. Now days, it seems that when an error IS the airline’s fault, some still won’t assist the passenger…er CUSTOMER.
@TravelWarr you don’t see the irony do you. Law abiding citizens having to wait 6 hours. People illegally entering not so much. Too bad you’re uncomfortable but this is wrong and the people responsible need to be called out.
Holy crap. I travel to MIA a couple of times a year in the regular non-citizen line (Swedish citizen = not eligble for Global Entry) and usually end up waiting 1-2 hours, which feels like an eternity. I love the US, but immigration and airport security lines sure do suck compared to all other places I go to. As long as I maintain my frequent flyer status and book premium cabins, I find that I can make it through any line at the airport in no more than 10 minutes (and I travel internationally pretty much every week), except in the US where I frequently wait 90+ minutes 🙁
Remember the border bill diaper donny made coward republicans kill? It included hiring more CBP agents too.
Immigration lines at MIA have been horrible for as long as I can remember. The situation seems only to be getting worse.
I’m not an American citizen, cannot get Global Entry. I’ve been to the US dozens of times so I know better but for those whose first taste of the US is a six hour long queue it will be really disappointing.
Now, seriously, how can this be so difficult to fix ? Nowhere I’ve traveled to I have had to endure three+ hours lines except for MIA. Nowhere.
Long lines at MSP 2 weeks ago. I think 2 hours.
Luckily they told everyone with Global entry to just walk to the front of the line. (Which I did).
Also: Privatized security is not the answer. Security lines sucked just as much before the TSA was created, and those were private firms.
This issue often happens when you have a captive audience
Is there a way to get to Global Entry in Miami without waiting in this line? I hope so.
Global Entry is totally worth it if you fly internationally a couple times within the 4 or 5 years it is good for. Mostly because you get PreCheck with it. If it saves you one 2-hour wait it is worth it the entire cost. Especially when you get home from flying internationally. You are tired and just want to get home.
Quite literally the red budget cuts at work; what did you expect?
Of course it’s also in a red state, where the local infrastructure has been cut to the bone since COVID.
But at least they aren’t (yet) rifling through your reading material to catch you if you’re carrying abortion drugs or banned books with you. The way things are going, that wont be long.