Deadly border techniques are increasingly being used to violently stop migrants

In late May 2024, I visited the US-Mexico border to inspect a new smart wall addition to the border structure. My friend Todd Miller, a journalist from Arizona, accompanied me as we surveyed the wall as Customs and Border Protection trucks roared by and drones scanned the sky.

A makeshift memorial for 16-year-old Jos Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol after he was accused of throwing a rock at a wall. (P. Molnar) CC BY

They also saw a young man scale a rusty border wall and jump off a guard tower, then turn around quickly and run out of sight into a quiet residential area of ​​Nogales, Arizona.

I have been working for six years on my book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Immigration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The research began in 2018 with an investigation into how Canada used algorithms in immigration applications.

Since then, I've conducted ethnographic research on remote European borders, in East Africa, in Palestine, and on the U.S.-Mexico border. At each of these borders, and indeed at nearly every stage of a person's migration journey, new technologies are transforming the way people move. From the use of invasive biometrics in refugee camps, to discriminatory algorithms for evaluating visa applications, to drone surveillance replacing search and rescue missions, these projects have become more violent.

“This book tells the global story of a dystopian vision coming to reality, where life and death are decided by algorithms. My research examines how governments are deploying technology with little regulation on the world's most vulnerable people. It also shows how borders have become big business, with defense companies and tech startups competing for profits in the multi-billion dollar Border Industrial Complex.”

Deadly Digital Borders

My book is about people caught in the most dangerous and unregulated border technologies, like Elias Alvarado, a young husband and father from Central America who died trying to enter the United States. I visited his memorial with James Holman, a former U.S. Marine who now works as a search and rescue worker in the beautiful but dangerous Sonoran Desert. Holman founded Battalion Search and Rescue, one of several groups combing the desert looking for survivors. Often they find only bones.

Search and rescue worker James Holman places an orange cross on a memorial to Elias Alvarado, a young man who died in the harsh Sonoran Desert. (P. Molnar), CC BY

And one of the most surreal moments in my career — and I experienced many times during the years I was in Sonora searching for people who died crossing the border — was learning that the Department of Homeland Security had announced that it was training a robotic dog to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

The four-legged machines, equipped with cameras and sensors, will join a network of drones and automated surveillance towers. It's part of a global trend: More countries are turning to AI-driven technologies to manage migration as war, economic instability and climate change displace more people.

Technical solutions don't work

Although presented as a solution to the so-called border crisis, border technology as a deterrent has not worked at all. In fact, it has led to an increase in the loss of life. People desperate for safety and exercising their internationally protected right to asylum continue to move.

Instead, they will take more circuitous routes. Scholars such as Samuel Chambers, Jeffrey Boyce, and Sarah Launius have already documented a threefold increase in deaths at the US-Mexico border as smart borders have expanded. And thousands of deaths have been reported at European borders, both maritime and land, as surveillance has intensified.

Responsible Storytelling

Borders are violent. They are underpinned by historical discrimination, racial logics and imperialist fantasies of exclusion. But they are also sites of enormous resistance and solidarity, often in very unexpected ways.

Storytelling and sharing is a form of resistance, a deeply important element in any attempt to explain the opaque world of border technologies, and over the years people have been incredibly generous in sharing their stories with me, often during the most difficult times.

Through our conversations and relationships, I found the issues of witnessing, extracting stories, and documenting increasingly complex, and I wondered how best to communicate the atrocities that continue to occur. I hope that the lived experiences of the people I met can help draw attention to these dangerous techniques.

Building a better world

A central tenet of my work is to redistribute resources directly to affected communities. I run the Refugee Law Labs Migration and Technology Monitor, a multilingual platform, archive, and community, and in 2023 we are launching a first-of-its-kind fellowship program to enable people on the move to talk about their experiences with the impacts of surveillance.

Ultimately, those with lived experience of migration must be the ones to examine both the harmful effects of technology and the creative solutions that innovation can bring to the complex story of human mobility.

Borders Affect Everyone

As we move around the world, we will all be affected in some way by migration management technologies. While the greatest impacts will be on traditionally marginalized communities, such as refugees and asylum seekers, migration management technologies affect everyone.

A robot dog running around the border? On April 11, 2023, the New York Police Department announced that they would be bringing robot dogs back to the streets to keep New York safe. One machine was painted white with black spots to look like a Dalmatian.

I hope that my book, and related research in this field, will illuminate the deep human stakes at borders around the world by foregrounding the stories of people on the move and highlighting the bold forms of resistance that have emerged against these increasingly violent technologies.

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