Originally Posted by
MikeFly
Admittedly, I don't clear at LAX after an AA flight very often. Hard for me to imagine the setup that afternoon had been there for two years. Officers had card tables with equipment on it and exposed wiring. Maybe with the intl. luggage/customs opening yesterday they rearranged the immigration part. If it really has been that way for two years; I wouldn't know what to say about such a poor layout and process.
For two years it has been T4 for immigration and TBIT for Customs. What JonNYC has described as starting this week (as I understand his tweet) is a customs facility in T4 as well, but it doesn't sound like you went through that on your trip.
When I last came through LAX the T4 area was about as chaotic as you describe with GE kiosks at the end of a roped off cul-de-sac (creating substantial bottlenecks). I presume (now) that this was due to construction of some of the new facility that opened this week. Presumably the chaos you saw was so that they could do an overnight switch from the TBIT walk to customs in T4.
So, what you saw this week was not what has been there for two years, but the process was the same as the last two years. And hopefully no longer, as JonNYC has described - but which we have no reports of yet here.