MIT Technology Review maps deaths near AI border surveillance towers
A 15-month investigation with Times of San Diego found people who walked undetected past AI-enabled towers and died nearby, the outlet said.
MIT Technology Review published an investigation on Monday into deaths near the surveillance towers the US government has installed along its border with Mexico. Journalists at both newsrooms spent 15 months on the work, which the outlets call Dying on Camera.
The investigation describes what it calls the first comprehensive map of deaths along the line of towers. Reporters found cases of people who walked undetected through areas the AI-enabled towers were meant to watch, and who later died nearby, where their bodies went unnoticed. The mapping and the count are the outlets' own, and no other newsroom has published a comparable figure.
One case is José Morales Bernal, who crossed into the United States on 8 April 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday. He walked through the desert in southern New Mexico within range of three towers, according to the investigation.
A second account follows Graciela Gómez Hernández, 30, who crossed from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California on 14 September 2025. She sent voice messages to her mother and sister as she walked, and a surveillance camera stood in plain sight, the reporters wrote.
The outlets published a companion piece setting out four changes they say could address the failures. The US government has spent billions of dollars on border surveillance, the investigation said. The published summaries do not carry a response from the agencies that operate the towers.