Investigation Finds More Than 1,050 Deaths Within Advertised Range of U.S. Border Towers

An MIT Technology Review investigation has found more than 1,050 people died within the advertised range of U.S. border-surveillance towers from 2015 through early 2026. The reporting identifies cases where people passed through areas watched by AI-enabled towers and later died nearby, raising the possibility of failures in detection, response, or both.

A system built to spot movement and send alerts

Customs and Border Protection says its autonomous surveillance towers use AI to detect and classify people, vehicles, and animals, then alert Border Patrol agents to activity in monitored areas. The towers are one part of a wider system that includes older camera towers, drones, blimps, seismic sensors, and tunnel-sensing robots.

That design creates a chain: automated detection, an alert, and a human response. A death near a tower does not establish which link broke. Anduril says CBP operates its towers after delivery, and that terrain, physical obstructions, and agency-set virtual boundaries can affect actual coverage.

The count is large, but not a verdict on every tower

The journalists cross-referenced nearly 4,000 locations where human remains were found with information on nearly 600 towers. The tally is an undercount, the reporting says, because CBP does not publish a comprehensive tower map and operates about 800 towers.

The findings are not confined to older equipment. The investigation estimated that more than 110 people have died within range of modern autonomous Anduril towers since 2021. Its topographical analysis found that most identified deaths did not occur in analyzed blind spots, though some tower views were substantially constrained by terrain.

How the investigation built its map

In its methodology report, MIT Technology Review describes a 15-month effort to assemble and check the records behind the map. Researchers compared death locations from 2015 onward with tower locations and installation dates. They excluded deaths inside Border Patrol stations, deaths in car crashes during pursuits, and cases without sufficiently precise locations.

The usable Texas records ran to more than 4,000 pages, including handwritten police reports. For large batches from Kenedy, Webb, and Hidalgo Counties, the team used Anthropic's Claude API to extract the coordinates where remains were found, then manually checked batches for accuracy. The case base drew on more than 1,500 Texas cases, more than 1,700 Arizona cases from Humane Borders, and nearly 1,000 cases from No More Deaths.

A missing review process leaves the key question open

José Morales Bernal died 360 feet from an Anduril tower in southern New Mexico after landfill workers, not Border Patrol, noticed him and called for help. In the same desert area that year, the investigation found 18 other deaths within range of three Anduril towers; five were visible from the closest tower.

Former agents and officials told the publication that when a body is found, CBP does not formally investigate whether surveillance should have detected that person or why agents did not reach them. CBP typically deletes tower footage after 30 days unless an internal review is opened, and such reviews usually involve deaths in custody.

Expansion continues as oversight questions mount

A June Government Accountability Office report cited by the investigation said Border Patrol had 803 fielded towers, planned another 175, and expected the network to reach 2,300 by 2034. CBP says it evaluates autonomous surveillance technology by its effect on detection, response coordination, agent safety, and mission outcomes.

MIT Technology Review recommends that CBP audit deaths near towers, improve death records, track technology-assisted apprehensions, and investigate deaths within surveillance range. It reported that CBP has not conducted a comprehensive audit quantifying such deaths and evaluating tower effectiveness, despite having the ability to do so since at least 2015.