The Most Surveilled Place in America

The Most Surveilled Place in America

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        The Most Surveilled Place in America
        
            
        
        
            
        
    
    
        By: Gaby Del Valle
        Photos: Ash Ponders
        
    
    
        8.3.22
        In the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Border Patrol spent billions on high-tech surveillance. All the drones, cameras, and manpower do little to deter migrants from trying to cross the border — it only makes the journey deadlier.
    



    





    


        	
	
	
		It’s
		unlikely
		the
			
		hikers
		knew
		they
		were
		being
		watched.
		They
		had
		tried
		to
		blend
		in:
		all
		11
		were
		wearing
		camouflage
		with
		the
		intention
		of
		vanishing
		into
		the
		desert
		scrub.
		They
		were
		on
		a
		remote
		mountain
		trail
		on
		the
		outskirts
		of
		Ajo,
		Arizona,
		a
		former
		mining
		town
		of
		about
		3,000
		people
		just
		a
		few
		dozen
		miles
		north
		of
		the
		Mexican
		border.
		It
		was
		a
		warm
		November
		morning,
		still
		early
		enough
		in
		the
		day
		that
		the
		sun
		must
		have
		felt
		good
		on
		their
		skin
		—
		the
		air
		is
		cold
		up
		in
		the
		mountains,
		colder
		still
		in
		the
		dry
		desert
		winter,
		though
		the
		heat
		always
		finds
		you
		eventually.
		The
		sky
		was
		bright
		and
		endless,
		punctuated
		by
		just
		a
		few
		clouds.
		But
		even
		if
		the
		migrants
		looked
		closely,
		there’s
		no
		way
		they
		could
		have
		noticed
		the
		MQ-9
		Predator
		B
		drone
		stalking
		them
		from
		20,000
		feet
		above.

Nearly 150 miles away at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, the migrants were on display. Two Customs and Border Protection agents tracked the group from a cramped shipping container on base that was being used as a temporary ground control station. Each agent sat before five monitors: the pilot flew the drone while the camera operator focused on tracking the group’s movements. The 11 migrants appeared as small figures on a pair of screens, bright white smudges moving across a gray background. Their clothing may have helped them blend in with the cholla cacti and spiky ocotillo plants of the Sonoran Desert, but it couldn’t fool the Predator’s infrared camera. They had been betrayed by their own body heat.

The migrants must have noticed the helicopter first: an EC-120 Colibrí, Spanish for “hummingbird.” Then came a pair of Border Patrol agents on foot. “On your tail, there’s another group of two, probably about 50 yards behind you,” the camera operator in Tucson told one of the ground agents by radio.

Then he turned to me and explained what we were looking at. “That’s the agent,” he said, pointing at a vaguely person-shaped silhouette on one of the screens. He had to raise his voice so I could hear him over the endless hum of the servers that took up half the 16-by-20-foot room. “He just apprehended that guy, and that’s the group right there.” We watched as one member of the group tried to wrestle the Border Patrol agent. The others walked toward him, ready to give up.

CBP agents monitor remote camera feeds from scores of cameras.

        	From the shipping container, it was impossible to know anything about the group aside from what was visible on-screen. They could have been from Guatemala or El Salvador or Mexico or anywhere else. They could have been asylum seekers or drug runners or neither. Maybe it was their first time trekking through the desert; maybe it was their fifth. Maybe they were headed for Phoenix or Boston or for one of those tiny towns that have become Central American enclaves through the availability of agricultural jobs and word of mouth. These details were irrelevant to the CBP drone operators watching the migrants from Tucson, the Border Patrol agents tracking them through the mountains, and the crew following along in the helicopter. Their job was to find and apprehend anyone crossing the border illegally, no matter who they were.

https://www.theverge.com/c/23203881/border-patrol-wall-surveillance-tech

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