4 ways to address the failures we found along the US border’s “virtual wall”

The US government has installed hundreds of surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, often called the virtual wall, to detect people crossing illegally. These towers use advanced technology, including AI, to monitor remote desert areas. However, a recent investigation by MIT Technology Review found that many people died near these towers without being detected, and their bodies remained unnoticed for weeks or months. The article highlights that the government does not have a complete map of where these towers are located or when they were installed. For example, the investigation identified nearly 600 towers, but the government claims there are 800 in operation today. The article suggests that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency managing these towers, should conduct a full audit to understand how many towers exist, where they are, and how often they fail to detect people. This audit is necessary because the current lack of data makes it impossible to assess the system’s effectiveness or the number of deaths linked to it.

Tracking deaths of migrants near the US-Mexico border is currently unreliable and incomplete. There is no national agency responsible for collecting and publishing all records of migrant deaths, which means data is scattered across different agencies and often missing. Border Patrol, the agency responsible for patrolling the border, has its own system called the Border Safety Initiative Tracking System (BSITS), which has been in place since 2007. However, even this system has gaps. For instance, a 2022 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that many deaths, especially those not discovered by Border Patrol, were not being tracked. In 2023, the GAO noted that CBP had taken steps to fix this issue, but outside researchers still believe the agency’s death counts are underestimates. Additionally, CBP launched the Missing Migrant Program in 2017 to prevent deaths and improve data collection, but the GAO found in 2025 that the program lacked a plan to use the data to measure its success in reducing deaths or increasing rescues.

The US Border Patrol was asked in 2014 to track when surveillance technology, such as towers, helped agents apprehend people crossing the border illegally. This data would help Congress and CBP understand how effective the technology is. However, the system for logging this information has been unreliable. A 2017 report by the GAO found that agents in Texas were incorrectly crediting non-existent towers for hundreds of apprehensions. Border Patrol agreed to improve training, but agents told the investigation that logging these cases remains a low priority. As of 2021, CBP had still not analyzed whether the towers were effective, and the results of a 2022 analysis remain unpublished. This lack of tracking means the virtual wall is expanding without proper assessment of its impact. The article suggests that CBP should prioritize accurate logging to evaluate the technology’s real-world performance.