05/23/2024

The Deadly Digital Frontiers at the Border

Borders are a viable testing ground for technologies

Like a wound in the landscape, the rusty border wall cuts along Arizona’s Camino Del Diablo, the Devil’s Highway. You can drive up to it and touch it, the rust staining your hand for the rest of the day. Once the pride and joy of the Trump administration, this wall is once again the epicenter of a growing political row.

I make my way slowly over the course of a few hours down the dusty Sonora desert, following the footsteps of a search-and-rescue group in southern Arizona to a memorial site of Elias Alvarado, a young husband and father from Central America, whose body was discovered mere kilometers from a major highway. Alvarado was ensnared in a growing surveillance and “smart border system,” a dragnet at the U.S.-Mexico border that has already claimed thousands of lives, underscored by a growing commitment by the U.S. government to make a virtual smart border extending far beyond its physical frontier.

High-risk and unregulated border technologies are impacting every aspect of migration. At the U.S.-Mexico border, fixed AI-surveillance towers scan the Sonora desert for movement, joining an arsenal of border technologies such as ground sensors, license plate readers, and facial recognition applications used by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Now, in an election year, migration continues to be a defining issue for both the Biden administration as well as former President Trump, who promises to deport 15 to 20 million people, strengthen the wall and its surveillance dragnet. In this politically fraught environment, we must pay close attention to these high-risk technologies, which are deepening divides between the powerful actors who develop high-tech interventions and the marginalized communities who are on their receiving end.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.