US Immigration: Computer says No

I managed to fly directly into Raleigh-Durham yesterday. The flight arrived on time, I hadn’t checked any baggage, and I was feeling even more optimistic about getting to the hotel before the evening kicked off when I realised that most people on the plane were heading for the ‘US citizens’ channel. Hurrah, I thought, a short wait at immigration for once!
This was a mistake. For as I joined said queue, it was announced that the US wasn’t taking in any of us foreigners right now. The biometrics system had crashed (nationally, apparently), and without the ability to take our fingerprints for no particular purpose, well, they just couldn’t risk letting us loose in their fair nation. So if we could just stand there, while they dealt with all the real people US citizens first, then they might just get around to helping us.
I should note that as US immigration people go, everyone in NC was nice and friendly about it all (not to the extent that they’d let us make phone calls, or find us somewhere to sit while we waited, but they seemed pretty sympathetic), but I do wish that when, after an hour or so, it was announced that they’d decided to waive the need for biometrics, they hadn’t made it sound so much like they were doing us a favour.