President Donald Trump’s expanding AI border surveillance system can watch people leaving their homes, children on playgrounds and even inside a bedroom window, a New York Times investigation found.
More than a million people in the United States and Mexico live within potential view of the AI-powered towers, according to the newspaper’s analysis.
“It can see when I leave, who I’m with, who’s coming and going from our house,” said Eloisa Cavazos, whose Mission, Texas, home sits across from a tower. “It follows you.”
The Trump administration has secured more than $1 billion to build 1,500 new AI towers, expanding a “smart wall” whose cameras “are always watching,” the Times reported.
To illustrate the reach, Times reporters used drone footage to approximate tower views. Their demonstration showed children on an elementary school playground, people entering and leaving homes, and vehicles traveling through town.
Moving beyond one tower’s reach does not necessarily put someone out of view. The system is designed to track people as they pass between overlapping coverage areas.
Customs and Border Protection says the technology is “essential to border security” and that it respects privacy and civil liberties. But the Times pointed out that people cannot opt out of surveillance.
Anduril, which builds most of the towers, disputed the analysis, saying customers can block designated areas from monitoring. CBP did not explain how often it uses that safeguard.
“We don’t want to be surveilled by our government,” former Laredo Councilman Gene Belmares, a Republican, told the Times.
Dave Maass, investigations director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the program a “costly boondoggle.”
“Every few years, they make these amazing claims about the technology,” he told the Times. “And then an oversight body looks at it and finds it’s a big, wasteful program that is not delivering results.”
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