MIT Technology Review finds migrants dying within range of AI border surveillance towers

An investigation finds two kinds of failure

MIT Technology Review, working with Times of San Diego on a year-long project the outlets call "Dying on Camera," examined the AI-powered surveillance towers that form the US government's "virtual wall" along the Mexican border. Published on September 21, 2026, the reporting concludes that the system fails in two distinct ways: sometimes the technology does not detect people crossing at all, and sometimes agents do not respond when it does. Reporters interviewed more than 45 people, including current and former White House advisors, Border Patrol agents, medical examiners, sheriffs, humanitarian volunteers and employees of the tech companies involved.

The program is expensive and expanding. The government estimated in 2023 that its plans for the towers, 803 of which now exist, would cost $6.2 billion over their lifespan. After receiving historic levels of funding in 2025, CBP intends to spend $1 billion on 1,497 additional towers by 2034. Yet according to MIT Technology Review, CBP has done little to evaluate how well the towers work or how many people have died where they keep watch. Officials from four presidential administrations told reporters they believed such deaths were rare or nonexistent, and none could point to any comparable government analysis. When a body is found, former agents said, CBP does not formally investigate whether the towers should have detected the person, or why help did not arrive sooner.

Dying in view of the cameras

The companion feature follows Graciela Gómez Hernández, a 30-year-old who crossed from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California on September 14, 2025, sending voice messages to her family as she walked. Between 2 and 3 p.m. she sent a final message saying she could not continue. A forensic team collected her remains two weeks later. A General Dynamics tower installed in 2019 stood about a mile from where she died, equipped with electro-optical and infrared cameras that can track targets five to seven miles out.

A Times of San Diego analysis found at least 138 cases in the past four years in which migrants' remains were discovered along the California border within range of the cameras meant to track crossers. A topographical analysis by MIT Technology Review estimated that more than half of those remains lay in spots where terrain did not block a camera's line of sight. The reporting names several of the dead: Marcia Dutra, 36, found in July 2023 after likely heat exposure, with a tower 2,000 feet away; Elvi Vasquez Bortolon, 28, found in February 2024 after suspected hypothermia, near a tower 1,400 feet away; and Ramón Montenegro, 51, found in August 2024 after possible heatstroke, with a tower 1,300 feet away.

The towers are only one layer. The Electronic Frontier Foundation counts more than 120 along the California border, alongside trail cameras, ground sensors, radar, drones and blimps, plus Defense Department satellites following a March 2025 directive. Anduril, which manufactures about half the towers at the southern border, said in June 2026 that its installations had autonomously identified hundreds of thousands of crossings, and an Arizona sector chief, John Morris, told a convention in May 2026 that agents were close to "knowing everything that comes across."

Old problems, new funding

MIT Technology Review traces the pattern back decades. Urban enforcement in the 1990s pushed crossings into remote desert where heat, rugged terrain and water scarcity made them far deadlier. The first remote-controlled camera towers arrived around 1998, and 200 went up in the first eight years at a cost above $429 million. Mark Borkowski, who managed CBP contracting, described agents watching dozens of screens covering as much as 850 square miles, with almost no chance of noticing a distant event, and a 2005 DHS inspector general report warned that activity could go unnoticed unless someone was actively watching. General Dynamics won a contract worth up to $103 million in 2013 to overhaul that system, which remains in use.

Companies and agencies push back

In a statement, CBP assistant commissioner Hilton Beckham said the towers use AI to detect and classify people, vehicles and animals, and that CBP evaluates them on detection, response coordination, agent safety and mission outcomes. Anduril said towers are operated by CBP once delivered, that effective range varies with terrain, obstructions and the virtual view boundaries CBP sets, and it alleged inaccuracies in the reporting without detailing them. General Dynamics referred questions to Border Patrol, which did not answer whether its towers had detected Gómez Hernández. Representative Delia Ramirez, a Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, responded to the findings by calling for the tower program to be terminated.

Why it matters

The virtual wall enjoys broad political support and rising budgets even though, by the investigation's account, no one in government measures whether it delivers on its core promise. The deaths documented near the towers expose a gap between vendor claims of near-total situational awareness and the reality of missed detections and unanswered alerts. The story is also a case study in AI procurement: a detection system deployed without performance audits, failure reviews or accountability for its blind spots will keep failing invisibly. As the reporters note, the deaths they found are only the failures that left a trace, and no one knows how many crossings go undetected or how many bodies remain unfound.