Many have heard of the physical border wall that exists in different parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, but there is also the “virtual wall”. This cyber wall stretches across the border, and it’s made up of things like drones, sensors, cameras, license plate readers and one of the latest additions: surveillance towers.
There are an estimated 500 surveillance towers across the southern border and are built by different defense companies like Elbit Systems of America, Anduril and General Dynamics just to name a few.
Both Democrats and Republicans have supported border technology through the years and President-elect Donald Trump’s website links to the 2024 GOP’s platform, which calls for “advanced technology to monitor and secure the border.” But advocates, researchers and locals argue that a virtual wall is just as controversial, and arguably as deadly, as a physical wall.
In this episode of Latino USA, producer Reynaldo Leaños Jr. travels to southern Arizona, where one of the first major concentrations of surveillance towers on the U.S.-Mexico border were built, and he looks at some of the history of these towers and what they mean today, and for the future of those crossing, and living, on the border.
Researchers like Geoff Boyce, Assistant Professor in the School of Geography at University College Dublin, have published work that shows how some surveillance towers, and other border and surveillance infrastructure, create a funneling effect in southern Arizona that corrals and drives migrants to some of the most remote and harsh desert landscapes, sometimes resulting in their deaths.
“What we see is that these towers, they’re mounted at around 100 feet tall, because the whole purpose of the towers is to get up and above the landscape so you can see a wide area,” Boyce told Latino USA. “What that means is people are crossing in mountainous areas with more rugged terrain that blocks the towers from various angles and increases the likelihood they’ll get lost and injured and prolongs their exposure to extreme temperature. The smugglers who are helping guide them through the desert select routes of travel that are outside of the visible range of the towers.”
Aid workers on the border in southern Arizona know about this funneling effect that impacts migrants, and it’s groups like The Tucson Samaritans that try to do something about it. One thing they do is that they often go out and leave food and water for migrants on various trails hoping that this small gesture will save lives.
Brian Best has been with The Samaritans for several years now. He said that they’ve traced about 1,500 miles of paths that migrants walk, but that these paths are always changing.
“Food is probably the most important because that’s what we’ve been finding here is that the food is gone every time,” he said. “Every trip for the last six months out here, it’s been empty. So we have to be out here regularly, everywhere to see where we see signs of recent passage.”
Not every migrant is lucky enough to find food or water left behind by groups like The Samaritans. And as a result, some of them die in the dangerous desert landscape.
Alvaro Enciso has made it part of his mission to help honor the lives of those who have perished on the border. He started a project known as “Donde Mueren Los Sueños”, or “Where Dreams Die,” where he creates brightly colored crosses and plants them into the Earth to mark the place where migrants died. Latino USA spent time with him earlier this year in southern Arizona and witnessed Alvaro in action.
“Someone died here last month,” he said. “He was 21 years of age. When he was found he was fully fleshed he had been here a day. You should not be dying that young.”
Alvaro is aware of how the towers are part of a broader enforcement strategy by Border Patrol, known as Prevention Through Deterrence, that was implemented in 1994 under the Bill Clinton administration.
“Prevention Through Deterrence is to send people through the most difficult parts of the desert, where there’s no water, there’s no help. All of the things that go along with that policy: towers, higher walls, drones, sensors, more border patrol agents have not impeded in any way people crossing,” he said.
There are people across the border, and beyond, who are trying to raise awareness about these surveillance towers, technologies and other border infrastructure and their impacts on migrants and local communities.
Colter Thomas, an undergraduate student and photographer at the University of Arizona, and Dugan Meyer, a PhD student at the University of Arizona, recently showcased their project “Infrastructures of Control.” The pair exhibited their photos at the University of Arizona.
Dugan and Colter traveled across the southern border and photographed the various types of surveillance towers to showcase in their exhibition.
“Anywhere that people live in the borderlands, these towers exist,” said Meyer. “We found so many examples of towers and other surveillance technologies integrated not just into neighborhoods, but near schools, into public parks, on buildings and water towers. They exist on private land and public land, everywhere essentially.”
Todd Miller is considered an expert when it comes to reporting on border technology. He wrote a book named “Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World.”
“My first thought as a journalist was, ‘Oh, I need to be looking way more into this,’” he said. “I did a number of trips. I went to Israel and Palestine twice, looking into the sort of tech companies, and why academics in Israel call Israel the homeland security capital of the world and why it’s the place per capita that is selling more of this type of border infrastructure around the world.”
He has also been keeping an eye on where border technology and surveillance is headed in the future. Todd recently attended the annual Border Security Expo in El Paso, Texas, where private companies can pitch their products and learn more about what are the current needs from agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, but this year’s conference was different.
“I find it really disturbing, as a journalist, that they didn’t allow journalists to register, and it’s the first time in 17 years that they’ve done this,” he said. “Journalists have always been able to come and report on this super important annual convention where the nuts and bolts of what the border is, where it’s going, the idea that there’s private industry involved in a profit motive, that those sorts of things should be public knowledge.”
Despite the ban on journalists, Todd managed to get in because he is an academic. He reported back to Latino USA that there was a lot of talk about using artificial intelligence in the near future, which raised a lot of questions for him, especially as this technology seeps into more border enforcement and the everyday jobs that border agents do.
“The last line of defense that this great nation has is the U.S. Border Patrol, without them that breaks down, we’re doomed,” said a speaker at a panel at the Border Security Expo in El Paso. Latino USA obtained audio recordings from some of the panels at the expo through a source that attended. “Each and every one of you with your technologies and abilities to focus on helping this great organization.”
The message at the expo was clear, it was a call for private companies to keep innovating their technologies and continue working with border agencies.
More towers will be built in the coming years, as well as upgrades to existing towers. Recently, several companies were awarded a multimillion dollar contract to assist. There is also $170 million dollars allocated for the deployment of “autonomous towers” and $47 million dollars allocated for “mobile surveillance capabilities” written into a recent bipartisan border security bill.
In order to better understand where this technology and surveillance is headed, we spoke to members of the Tohono O’Odham Nation. They tried to raise awareness about surveillance towers going up in their community in hopes that it could change the outcome.
Valentina Andrews, who goes by Tina, started the Tohono O’Odham Young Voices podcast in 2016 to help talk about issues related to her community, like the surveillance towers. Her friend, Joshua Garcia, also went around the community on the Nation to talk about the potential impacts the surveillance towers were going to have. But their efforts ultimately failed and the towers were constructed on their lands a few years later.
“When I think of my nieces and nephews, they know that’s what they grew up seeing and that’s normalized to them, but for us, it’s still not normal and I don’t think we’ll ever accept that,” said Tina. “It’s sad to even think that this could be potentially a permanent thing for us here.”
Now, there are more towers expected to be built across the U.S.-Mexico border in the near future and it’s only a matter of time until we see the impacts of the upcoming Trump administration when it comes to border communities, migrants passing through and the future of border technology and surveillance.
Featured image by Reynaldo Leaños Jr.
Produced by Reynaldo Leaños Jr. with editing by Mitra Bonshahi. It was mixed by Julia Caruso, with engineering support from JJ Querubin. It was fact-checked by Roxana Aguirre.