How we made the first comprehensive map of deaths along the US border's "virtual wall" We analyzed whether nearly 4,000 migrant deaths occurred within sight of the US government's surveillance towers. Our investigation found people dying near border surveillance towers that promised faster responses to crossings. Our 15-month investigation into death and surveillance along the US-Mexico border began with a simple question: Why did so many people die near government surveillance towers meant to help track and apprehend them? This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . To answer that question, we looked through thousands of pages of government documents, visited the border multiple times, and interviewed more than 45 people, including current and former White House advisors, presidential appointees, Border Patrol agents, medical examiners, sheriffs, humanitarian volunteers, and employees of tech companies. The result of our investigation is the first comprehensive map and analysis of deaths near border surveillance towers. Here's how we built it, what decisions we made along the way, and what the data can and can't tell us. The investigation relied on knowing where migrants have died and where and when US Customs and Border Protection towers were installed.

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.

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.

Post Millennial senior editor Andy Ngo unpacks what led to the arrests of members of an apparent transgender vegan cult on'The Ingraham Angle.' The apparent head of a radical transgender cult linked to six killings, including a U.S. Border Patrol agent, told a Maryland judge last week, "I haven't done anything wrong" while pleading for access to vegan food behind bars. "I might starve to death if you cannot answer me," Jack Amadeus LaSota, 34, who goes by "Ziz," told Judge Erich Bean during a bail hearing in Allegany County District Court in Maryland on Feb. 18, according to audio obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle. "I need the jail to be ordered for me to have a vegan diet. It's more important than whatever this hearing is."

Agents with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will no longer wear body cameras during field operations after a social media post publicized how to identify individual agents. "All U.S. Border Patrol Agents will cease the use of body-worn cameras (BWC) in all operational environments," CBP said in a statement to NewsNation, which originally reported the news. The directive comes after a post on Reddit claimed that the mobile application BLE Radar, which uses Bluetooth to scan for low-energy devices such as phones, smartwatches and speakers, can also track CBP body cameras from a distance of 100 yards and can also trigger improvised explosive devices. A Border Patrol agent stands on a cliff looking for migrants that crossed the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico near the city of Sasabe, Arizona. CBP officials sent out a directive following the post informing agents of a "potential security risk" while immediately pulling body cameras from use in the field.

A cult expert lifted the veil on the "Zizian" fringe group that is linked to the Vermont U.S. Border Patrol agent shooting. The "Zizians" are named for a 34-year-old computer engineer, Jack Amadeus LaSota, who goes by the nickname "Ziz," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. LaSota, who is transgender, goes by female pronouns and created the group of vegan activists, the outlet reported. The group, which began on the West Coast, was launched into the national spotlight after the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David "Chris" Maland in Vermont on Jan. 20. David Maland, a Minnesota native and U.S. Air Force veteran, worked as a Border Patrol agent at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Newport Station.

A group of suspected Mexican cartel members fired shots at U.S. Border Patrol agents on Monday afternoon as a group of migrants attempted to cross the Rio Grande. After drone video footage surfaced of an apparent cartel-on-cartel gunfight just south of the U.S. border with Mexico, Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas is calling attention to the danger still present at the border. The footage, which Roy obtained from sources on the border, was taken by a cartel drone and shows two sets of vehicles exchanging gunfire near the U.S. border. Video taken by the drone shows the operator eventually drop some type of missile, seeming to eliminate shooters on one side. Speaking with Fox News Digital, Roy said that the knowledge that cartels own drones with weapon capabilities "open[s] up a whole other frontier that we've got to manage and deal with border security."

A German national suspect on a legal visa allegedly killed a United States Border Agent during a traffic stop in Vermont near the Northern border, Fox News Digital has confirmed. "Our partners at the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the deceased subject is a German national in the U.S. on a current Visa," a spokesperson with FBI Albany said. Officials said on Monday, Jan. 20, 44-year-old U.S. Border Patrol Agent David "Chris" Maland was struck by gunfire during a traffic stop on Interstate 91 between Newport and Orleans, Vermont. In a statement, FBI Albany said that Maland was a U.S. Air Force veteran, saying: "We are heartbroken for our partners and share in their grief as they mourn the loss of their colleague." A Border Patrol Agent moves a robotic device next to Border Patrol vehicle on southbound Route 91 near Newport Vermont, where a U.S. Border Patrol Agent was shot dead, on Monday, January 20, 2025.

The U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in a shootout with armed suspects Monday has been identified as 44-year-old David Maland, a Customs and Border Protection source told Fox News. The veteran agent died Monday after a traffic stop on Interstate 91 between Newport and Orleans, Vermont, around 3:15 p.m. Monday, about 20 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border, according to the Department of Homeland Security. "A Border Patrol agent assigned to the US Border Patrol's Swanton Sector was fatally shot in the line of duty," acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman said in a statement. "Every single day, our Border Patrol agents put themselves in harm's way so that Americans and our homeland are safe and secure." Wide shot of the scene on southbound Route 91 near Newport, Vermont, where a U.S. Border Patrol Agent was shot dead, Monday, January 20, 2025.

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.