FlyerIntel Research

How Long US Customs Actually Takes

Two years of federal records for every major US arrival hall — and the queue you join depends on the passport you carry.

Published August 30, 2026 · Source period July 2023 – June 2026

Summary

Across 66 arrival terminals at 46 US airports, 409,582 hours of Customs and Border Protection records show a median passport control wait of 11 min for US citizens and 17 min for everyone else. The gap widens sharply at the bad end: on the worst tenth of hours, citizens wait 23 min while other passengers wait 41 min — 18 min longer. JFK Terminal 1 is the slowest hall measured, exceeding half an hour in 35.6% of its operating hours.

Key findings

Non-US passengers wait 6 min longer than citizens at the median, and 18 min longer in the worst tenth of hours.
The gap is widest at MIA Central Terminal: 5 min against 21 min.
JFK Terminal 1 is the slowest arrival hall, over 30 minutes in 35.6% of hours.
Among the busiest halls, ATL Concourse E is the fastest at a 6 min median.
Opening more booths does not shorten the queue: halls running 40 or more are the slowest of all.

This is not the TSA queue

Customs and Border Protection processes passengers arriving from abroad at passport control. It is a different queue, in a different hall, at a different point in the journey from the TSA checkpoint you clear on departure — and it is the one that decides whether a connection after an international flight is realistic. CBP publishes it per terminal and per hour, roughly two days in arrears, which makes it useless for "how long is it right now" and unusually good for "how long is this normally".

Median wait by passport, national

US citizens11 min

All other passengers17 min

US citizens, worst 10%23 min

All others, worst 10%41 min

Two queues, not one

Every hall in this dataset runs what is effectively a fast lane and a slow one. Citizens and residents are eligible for automated processing and for Global Entry, which together handle about a fifth of the US-passport traffic in these records; visitors are not, and are also subject to biometric capture and a longer interview. The result is that two people walking off the same aircraft can face materially different waits, and the difference grows precisely when the hall is under pressure — which is when a tight connection is already at risk.

Where the gap between passports is widest

Airport	Terminal	US citizens	All others	Difference
MIA	Central Terminal	5 min	21 min	15 min
JFK	Terminal 1	16 min	30 min	13 min
LAX	Tom Bradley International Terminal	14 min	28 min	13 min
JFK	Terminal 8 (American)	12 min	26 min	13 min
JFK	Terminal 4 (IAT)	11 min	25 min	12 min
JFK	Terminal 7 (British)	13 min	24 min	11 min
GUM	Main Terminal	6 min	16 min	10 min
MCO	Airside 4	5 min	16 min	10 min
MCO	Terminal C	25 min	36 min	9 min
LAS	Terminal 3	9 min	18 min	9 min
MIA	South Terminal	8 min	16 min	8 min
FLL	Terminal 1	14 min	23 min	8 min
SEA	South Satellite	16 min	25 min	8 min
DFW	Terminal D	10 min	18 min	8 min
HNL	Main Overseas Terminal	9 min	18 min	8 min
MIA	North Terminal	13 min	21 min	8 min
TPA	Main	6 min	14 min	7 min
SFO	Terminal G	11 min	18 min	7 min
IAH	IAB	13 min	19 min	6 min
EWR	Terminal B	13 min	19 min	5 min

Median wait per hour, for terminals with at least 1,500 measured hours.

More booths do not mean shorter queues

The intuitive fix is staffing, and the data does not support it. Halls running 40 or more booths have a median wait of around 25 minutes; halls running 6 to 10 sit near 14. That is not evidence that booths make things worse — it is evidence of what booths are for. CBP opens them in response to volume, and the ratio of arriving passengers to open booths stays remarkably flat across the whole range. What changes is the shape of the arrival: a hall running 40 booths is absorbing several widebodies that landed within minutes of each other, and no amount of parallel processing smooths a bank that arrives all at once.

Booths open, passengers per booth, and the resulting wait

Booths open	Passengers per booth	Median wait	Hours measured
1-5	76	16 min	20,273
6-10	54	14 min	80,860
11-15	46	16 min	82,213
16-20	47	17 min	59,645
21-25	49	18 min	29,447
26-30	51	19 min	12,627
31-35	51	20 min	6,078
36-39	47	20 min	2,353
40-64	44	25 min	2,766

Hours with at least 200 arriving passengers. Passengers per booth barely moves; the wait does.

Median wait by hour of the day, all airports

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Major US arrival halls ranked by worst-case wait

#	Airport	City	Terminal	Typical	Busy hour	Worst recorded	Hours over 30 min
1	JFK	New York	Terminal 1	24 min	52 min	245 min	35.6%
2	MCO	Orlando	Terminal C	33 min	52 min	240 min	58.2%
3	LAX	Los Angeles	Tom Bradley International Terminal	21 min	41 min	245 min	24.5%
4	JFK	New York	Terminal 4 (IAT)	18 min	41 min	257 min	20.9%
5	JFK	New York	Terminal 8 (American)	20 min	39 min	261 min	21.1%
6	MIA	Miami	Central Terminal	15 min	36 min	215 min	14.7%
7	JFK	New York	Terminal 7 (British)	20 min	36 min	176 min	18.2%
8	DTW	Detroit	Warren C Evans Terminal	23 min	36 min	118 min	22.6%
9	BNA	Nashville	Main	23 min	36 min	164 min	23.0%
10	EWR	Newark	Terminal B	16 min	34 min	224 min	13.3%
11	SEA	Seattle	South Satellite	19 min	34 min	226 min	15.6%
12	IAH	Houston	IAB	16 min	33 min	263 min	12.8%
13	LAS	Las Vegas	Terminal 3	15 min	33 min	166 min	12.8%
14	MIA	Miami	South Terminal	13 min	33 min	191 min	12.1%
15	SFO	San Francisco	Terminal A	17 min	33 min	225 min	12.5%
16	MIA	Miami	North Terminal	17 min	32 min	247 min	11.4%
17	FLL	Fort Lauderdale	Terminal 4	16 min	31 min	229 min	10.8%
18	FLL	Fort Lauderdale	Terminal 1	10 min	31 min	202 min	10.7%
19	HNL	Honolulu	Main Overseas Terminal	15 min	30 min	192 min	9.9%
20	ORD	Chicago	Terminal 5	15 min	30 min	206 min	9.6%
21	IAD	Washington	Satellite C	11 min	29 min	173 min	8.7%
22	FAT	Fresno	Main	15 min	29 min	113 min	7.9%
23	SAN	San Diego	Main	19 min	28 min	112 min	6.4%
24	IAD	Washington	International A	11 min	28 min	212 min	8.0%
25	BOS	Boston	Terminal E	16 min	28 min	212 min	7.0%
26	GUM	Hagåtña	Main Terminal	13 min	28 min	175 min	7.9%
27	AUS	Austin	Main	13 min	28 min	199 min	7.1%
28	MCO	Orlando	Airside 4	12 min	27 min	163 min	6.8%
29	SFO	San Francisco	Terminal G	14 min	27 min	190 min	6.4%
30	EWR	Newark	Terminal C	13 min	26 min	187 min	5.7%
31	ONT	Ontario	International Terminal	18 min	26 min	91 min	4.8%
32	DFW	Dallas–Fort Worth	Terminal D	13 min	26 min	227 min	5.4%
33	SJU	San Juan	San Juan AA	13 min	26 min	194 min	4.7%
34	JFK	New York	Terminal 5 (Jet Blue)	11 min	25 min	182 min	5.4%
35	SLC	Salt Lake City	Main	16 min	25 min	113 min	2.9%
36	MSP	Minneapolis	Terminal 1 Lindbergh	12 min	25 min	222 min	5.8%
37	SPN	I Fadang, Saipan	Main Terminal	13 min	24 min	117 min	4.2%
38	RDU	Raleigh–Durham	Terminal 2	11 min	23 min	165 min	3.1%
39	OAK	Oakland	Main	11 min	23 min	111 min	4.6%
40	DTW	Detroit	McNamara Terminal	12 min	23 min	173 min	3.5%
41	SJC	San Jose	Main	11 min	23 min	134 min	3.1%
42	STL	St. Louis	Main	10 min	22 min	111 min	3.2%
43	CLT	Charlotte	Main	9 min	21 min	304 min	3.8%
44	TPA	Tampa	Main	9 min	21 min	161 min	2.7%
45	PDX	Portland	Main	12 min	20 min	117 min	0.5%
46	MDW	Chicago	Main Terminal	9 min	20 min	174 min	1.4%
47	BWI	Baltimore	International Arrivals	9 min	19 min	136 min	0.8%
48	SMF	Sacramento	Main Terminal	10 min	19 min	114 min	1.1%
49	MSP	Minneapolis	Terminal 2 Humphrey	10 min	19 min	103 min	1.5%
50	LAX	Los Angeles	Satellite 7	12 min	19 min	153 min	1.5%
51	PHL	Philadelphia	Terminal A	8 min	18 min	255 min	2.4%
52	DEN	Denver	International	10 min	18 min	188 min	1.1%
53	SAT	San Antonio	Main	10 min	18 min	193 min	0.7%
54	ATL	Atlanta	Concourse F	8 min	18 min	207 min	1.7%
55	PHX	Phoenix	Main	5 min	14 min	206 min	0.7%
56	ATL	Atlanta	Concourse E	6 min	13 min	618 min	0.5%
57	PBI	West Palm Beach	Main	0 min	7 min	63 min	0.3%

Terminals with at least 1,500 measured hours, ranked by the wait on their worst tenth of hours.

What to do with this

Two things follow. If you are connecting after an international arrival, the hall you land in matters more than the airport: terminals at the same airport differ by more than the difference between airports. And if you are not travelling on a US passport, plan against the slower of the two figures on this page rather than the headline — the published average for a hall is not the wait you will personally experience. The busiest hour nationally is 14:00; the shortest typical wait falls around 1:00.

Methodology

Calculated by FlyerIntel from 409,582 hourly records published by US Customs and Border Protection covering 66 arrival terminals at 46 airports between 2024-08-28 and 2026-08-27. CBP reports, for each terminal and each hour, the average and maximum wait, the same figures split between US and non-US passport holders, the number of booths staffed, and passenger and flight counts. Medians are used throughout rather than means: a single diverted widebody puts a two-hour hour into an average and misrepresents every ordinary week around it. Hours with no arriving passengers are excluded, and a terminal appears in the ranking only with at least 1,500 measured hours.

Limitations

These are passport control waits for arriving international passengers. They are not TSA departure security waits and the two must not be compared. CBP publishes about two days in arrears, so this describes typical conditions rather than current ones. The figures measure the queue at passport control only, and exclude baggage reclaim, agricultural inspection and the walk to a connecting terminal — all of which sit between an arriving passenger and their next flight. Booth counts reflect positions staffed, not officers on duty.

Sources

CBP Airport Wait Times — US Customs and Border Protection · source
FlyerIntel analysis — FlyerIntel · source

Full FlyerIntel methodology · Report a problem with this analysis