Thousands of travellers and daily commuters were left stranded for hours after Malaysia’s immigration system suffered a major technical breakdown, causing severe congestion at checkpoints across the country.
The disruption reportedly affected most of Malaysia’s 114 immigration checkpoints on May 28, including the heavily used Johor crossings linked to Singapore. According to Malaysian authorities, the outage lasted for around five hours, creating long human and vehicular jams during the busy morning rush period.
Photos and videos circulating online showed massive queues stretching across immigration halls, bus terminals and vehicle lanes, with many travellers complaining they had been stuck since before dawn.
Immigration Systems Suddenly Went Offline
According to Malaysian media reports, the technical failure began at around 4:30am and continued until approximately 9:30am.
The outage affected the Malaysian Immigration Systems (MyIMMs), which powers immigration clearance processes nationwide.
During the disruption, automated gates, facial recognition systems and digital immigration clearance services became unusable.
Immigration officers were forced to manually process both Malaysians and foreign travellers, significantly slowing down movement at checkpoints.
Malaysia’s Immigration Department director-general, Zakaria Shaaban, said the problem originated from technical issues at the MyIMMs data centre.
He stressed that investigations found no signs of cyberattacks or hacking.
“The MyIMMs system is already 30 years old. Problems are bound to happen,” he said while addressing the incident.
Long Delays Hit Singapore-Malaysia Crossings
The disruption caused particularly serious congestion at the land checkpoints connecting Johor Bahru and Singapore, where tens of thousands of Malaysians cross daily for work.
The timing of the outage coincided with peak commuting hours, worsening delays at both the Woodlands Causeway and Tuas Second Link routes.
Authorities reportedly redeployed immigration personnel to operate manual counters at bus halls, motorcycle lanes and vehicle checkpoints in an attempt to reduce waiting times.
Additional security officers were also deployed to maintain crowd control and order as frustrated travellers packed immigration facilities.
Many commuters took to social media to vent frustration after missing work, appointments and transport connections due to the prolonged delays.
Some travellers claimed the traffic conditions stretched for several kilometres near the checkpoints.
Malaysia Plans New Immigration System
The latest disruption has renewed concerns over the reliability of Malaysia’s ageing immigration infrastructure, especially with major transport projects set to launch in the coming years.
Malaysia plans to replace the existing MyIMMs platform with the newer National Integrated Immigration System (NIISe), which is expected to be operational by 2028.
Officials acknowledged that further disruptions may continue occurring until the upgraded system is fully implemented.
Malaysia’s Home Minister, Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, previously stated that the vendor behind NIISe had already been instructed to prepare contingency and mitigation plans ahead of the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link launch in 2027.
The RTS Link is expected to dramatically increase cross-border passenger movement between Singapore and Malaysia once operational.
Second Major Breakdown In Recent Weeks
This was reportedly the second major immigration system crash in just over a month.
A similar outage on Apr. 23 previously caused thousands of travellers to be stranded for around two hours at Malaysian checkpoints.
The repeated incidents have sparked growing public criticism online, with some questioning whether the existing infrastructure can cope with rising travel volumes between Singapore and Malaysia.
Others also raised concerns about the potential economic impact on businesses and workers who rely on smooth cross-border travel each day.