The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can’t it catch people before they die?

When José Morales Bernal crossed the border in April 2024, his death was within range of three surveillance towers equipped with cameras and AI to detect and track people. Yet, none of that happened. He died just 360 feet from the closest tower, and it was landfill workers, not Border Patrol, who first spotted him. An autopsy concluded he had died of ‘environmental exposure.’

A first-of-its-kind investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals that deaths like Morales’s are startlingly common. After mapping nearly 4,000 locations where human remains were found against information on nearly 600 surveillance towers, it became clear that a humanitarian crisis at the border has unfolded in plain view of the government’s cameras. The system failed to detect people, and agents did not respond to alerts.

The US government is about to spend another $1 billion to triple the virtual wall’s size, yet systemic flaws persist. Broken towers, algorithms that failed to detect people, and agents who simply did not respond to alerts are common.

These failures are highlighted in a series called Dying on Camera, which investigates the deadly failings of border surveillance technology and their human cost. The stories reveal that the technology should be catching people, providing medical help, yet it often fails to do so.