The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die? When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the US in April 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, he was within range of three surveillance towers equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it. Instead, Morales died just 360 feet from the closest tower.

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.

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.

US border patrol is asking companies to submit plans to turn standard 4x4 trucks into AI-powered watchtowers--combining radar, cameras, and autonomous tracking to extend surveillance on demand. A US Customs and Border Protection agent stands guard as hundreds of protesters gather near an ICE facility opposing the detention of undocumented immigrants. The US Department of Homeland Security is seeking to develop a new mobile surveillance platform that fuses artificial intelligence, radar, high-powered cameras, and wireless networking into a single system, according to federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED. The technology would mount on 4x4 vehicles capable of reaching remote areas and transforming into rolling, autonomous observation towers, extending the reach of border surveillance far beyond its current fixed sites. The proposed system surfaced Friday after US Customs and Border Protection quietly published a pre-solicitation notice for what it's calling a Modular Mobile Surveillance System, or M2S2.

Fox News host Sean Hannity calls out Vice President Kamala Harris' far-left policies ahead of the November election on'Hannity.' Over the last year, Fox News correspondents Bill Melguin and Griff Jenkins have been following complaints from Border Patrol sources that many of the crucial remote surveillance cameras in multiple sectors along the southern border have not been operational. U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee Republicans say whistleblowers came forward to the committee last week, claiming that "some of the busiest Southwest border sectors have nearly 50 or more cameras offline with multiple towers that have been out of service for more than a year." On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, claiming that whistleblowers came forward to the committee last week with concerning information on this issue. The letter from Republicans to Mayorkas demanded answers.

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.

Last year, the United States Department of Homeland Security advertised the impending "deployment" on the US-Mexico border of "robot dogs". According to a celebratory feature article published on the department's website, the goal of the programme was to "force-multiply" the presence of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as well as to "reduce human exposure to life-threatening hazards". In case there was any doubt as to which human lives were of concern, the article specified: "The American Southwest is a region that blends a harsh landscape, temperature extremes and various other non-environmental threats that can create dangerous obstacles for those who patrol the border." There is no denying that the US-Mexico border is an inhospitable place; just ask the countless refuge seekers who have died trying to navigate it, thanks in large part to ongoing US efforts to effectively criminalise the very right to asylum. And the terrain is becoming ever more hostile with the mad dash to run the entire world on artificial intelligence, border "security" operations to boot. The proliferation of AI-reliant surveillance technology has increasingly forced undocumented people into ever more dangerous territory, where "non-environmental threats" will apparently now also include canine robots.

AUSTIN, Texas – Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican who represents a district in Texas that spans more than 800 miles along the border, warned that the surge of migrants crossing into the US illegally won't stop until Congress takes action. Tomorrow, it's your city, whether that's Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Florida," Gonzales told Fox News Digital on Saturday. There have been more than two million migrant encounters this fiscal year, including more than 203,000 just last month. House Republicans unveiled their "Commitment to America" agenda this week, which calls for ending catch-and-release loopholes, requiring proof of legal status for a job, and increasing funding for infrastructure and advanced technology at the border. Autonomous surveillance towers are a key piece of technology that Congress should fund for Border Patrol, Gonzales said. The towers, which can be erected in just a few hours and reach 33 feet in height, scan the surrounding area and use artificial intelligence to detect both migrants and the human smugglers who traffic them. "Every border sector is asking for more of these," Gonzales said. "What you don't hear too much about – the'gotaways' – these are people that we know entered the country illegally, but we don't know where they went.