The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die? Surveillance towers, increasingly powered by AI, promised faster responses to crossings. Our investigation of deaths near the towers found they are failing to deliver. When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses. As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they were built by the defense tech company Anduril and equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. They transmit live video to nearby control rooms and can send alerts to the government-issued smartphones held by agents in the area, prompting the closest available to respond. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . These AI-enabled towers are meant to give greater visibility across the 1,951-mile southern border, freeing up border agents from having to spend hours staring into video monitors. They were installed in this particular place to spot border crossers before they reached the nearby town of Sunland Park. If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it. Despite the nearby surveillance towers, it was employees of the local landfill, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted Morales that morning. At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol. Agents arrived 45 minutes later. When an agent then called 911 to report the body, he said it was "probably one of the migrants crossing through there," seemingly unaware that Morales had been moving near the agency's surveillance systems earlier that day. Morales had died just 360 feet from the closest surveillance tower.

She died at the San Diego border. In Southern California's Otay Mountain Wilderness, the federal surveillance network seems unavoidable. But year after year, migrant deaths persist. A year ago, she crossed the border from Tijuana, and soon sent her family a final set of messages. She had only walked for a couple of hours, and already she was lost. It was early afternoon on Sept. 14, 2025, when 30-year-old Graciela Gómez Hernández crossed the border from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California, sending voice messages to her mother and sister as she walked. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . Gómez Hernández did not tell her family about her plan until the day before. Once she arrived in California, she hoped to work and send money back to her three children and her parents in southern Mexico. Her oldest son, age 11, had asked for a bicycle.

The US has spent billions on surveillance towers, but hundreds of people have died near them. Here's how to strengthen federal oversight. We found cases of people who walked undetected through areas surveilled by advanced, AI-enabled towers and later died nearby, where their bodies remained unnoticed for weeks or months. These cases reflect systemic flaws in the virtual wall: broken towers, algorithms that failed to detect people, and agents who simply did not respond to alerts. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . Each of these deaths should have raised alarms inside US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about the flaws in the agency's surveillance network.

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Two agents involved in the shooting deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis are reportedly part of highly militarized DHS units whose extreme tactics are generally reserved for war zones. An officer with a Department of Homeland Security Special Response Team stands against a protester in Portland, Oregon. As Minneapolis continues to reel from the fatal shooting of 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents on the morning of January 24, the international spotlight is firmly fixed on the heavily armed and masked operatives who have spearheaded the Trump administration's violent immigration sweeps. At the heart of the deployment in Minnesota, as well as the chaotic clashes with communities in Southern California and Illinois, are hundreds of agents that operate within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection: ICE's two Special Response Teams (SRT), CBP's one SRT, and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). These paramilitary tactical units behave not like local police, but instead like special forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other far-flung battlefields from the Forever Wars of the past quarter century.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. An unmanned Predator drone flies over Kandahar Air Field in southern Afghanistan in 2010. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . MQ-9 Predator drones were deployed over Los Angeles to monitor anti-ICE protests in June.

Vice President Harris pledges a new path forward, invokes Jan. 6 and reminds supporters that America knows what kind of leader former President Trump is in speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has indicated that she would be willing to undergo a cognitive test, has also suggested that under a Harris administration, the U.S. would swiftly remove individuals who illegally enter the country, "prosecute the cartels," and provide Border Patrol with needed support. "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell confronted Harris about former President Donald Trump's claim that the vice president is "a very low-IQ person" who should undergo a test. "Would you take a cognitive test?" O'Donnell asked. "Sure," Harris responded, adding, "I would challenge him to take the same one." She claimed that Trump "is increasingly unstable and unhinged."

Former National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd on border agents threatening to leave if Kamala Harris wins the presidential election and explains agents' frustrations with the Biden-Harris administration. The Border Patrol is facing a large-scale outage of security cameras at the southern border with a memo reportedly warning it is having "significant impacts" on operations in apprehending migrants, although officials note there are other layers of security in place as well. NBC News reported that an October memo said nearly one-third of cameras, roughly 150 of 500 cameras on surveillance towers, were out due to technical issues. "The nationwide issue is having significant impacts on [Border Patrol] operations," the memo said. The Remote Video Surveillance Systems are nearly 15 years old and are used to monitor areas of the border without the need for regular on the ground patrols.

Fox News Digital was on the ground in El Paso Sector as Border Patrol agents caught illegal immigrants entering the U.S., including one group that cut into a border fence. SUNLAND PARK, N.M. -- As Border Patrol agents work to combat the movement of illegal immigrants across the southern border in the El Paso Sector, they say a multi-layered enforcement system that has been expanded in recent years and combines the use of barriers with technology and other forms of enforcement has helped thwart cartel smuggling operations and nab illegal immigrants moving into the U.S. Overshadowing the border in Sunland Park, New Mexico, is miles of border wall. Some of it is border fence built during the Obama administration, while other parts consist of Trump-era bollard wall. Fox News Digital was on the ground when agents nabbed illegal immigrants just feet from the fence they had cut a hole through. Even though they got through, it gave agents time to apprehend them.

Texas DPS said the smuggler was smuggling two illegal immigrants from Mexico. Texas authorities announced Thursday that they have arrested a confirmed MS-13 gang member with a lengthy rap sheet, whose name is on an international watchlist, after he attempted to escape deeper into the U.S. in a grain hauler on a train. Delmar Sanchez Zuniga is a previously deported Honduran national with a lengthy rap sheet, authorities said. Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement on Thursday that he is a confirmed MS-13 gang member on the Transnational Criminal Organization Watchlist. The agency said that Texas Rangers, using drone technology, observed a number of illegal immigrants attempting to board a train in Maverick County on June 3.