《麻省理工科技评论》今日发表了我们关于在美国政府沿美墨边境部署的监控塔“虚拟墙”附近死亡人数的调查。
我们发现，有些人穿过由先进的、人工智能驱动的监控塔覆盖的区域时未被发现，随后在附近死亡，而他们的尸体在数周甚至数月内都无人察觉。这些案例反映了“虚拟墙”存在的系统性缺陷：故障的监控塔、未能检测到人员的算法，以及仅仅对警报不予响应的执法人员。
这个故事是《麻省理工科技评论》与《圣迭戈时报》合作的“镜头下的死亡”系列报道的一部分。两家新闻机构的记者在过去一年中审查了边境监控技术的失败案例，并挖掘了在边境地区丧生者的故事。
每一次死亡本应引发美国海关和边境保护局（CBP）对其监控网络缺陷的警觉。这一点在由国防公司安杜里尔（Anduril）建造的最新塔台附近尤为突出，该公司继续赢得主要合同，并有望从计划用于边境安全的联邦资金激增中获益。美国计划到2034年投入10亿美元，将“虚拟墙”的规模扩大两倍。
以下是CBP应采取的四个应对这些失败的举措。
这张档案照片拍摄于2021年6月16日，一个来自委内瑞拉的家庭在越过美墨边境并向德克萨斯州德尔里奥的执法人员自首后，走向一辆边境巡逻队的运输工具。ERIC GAY/AP PHOTO
“如果我是联邦政府，我会进行审计，因为感觉这根本行不通。”
当《麻省理工科技评论》向新墨西哥州众议员莎拉·席尔瓦展示仅在2024年一年，在她选区附近的一小片沙漠中就有超过18人在监控塔附近死亡时，她做出了上述反应。
进行审计是必要的，因为尽管我们翻阅了数千页关于监控塔的警方报告和其他文件，但我们对于现有塔台的数量和位置的了解仍然有限。
CBP并未发布其“虚拟墙”的全面地图。我们转而依赖非营利组织电子前沿基金会（Electronic Frontier Foundation）主导的地图绘制工作，然后利用卫星图像来验证特定塔台的位置以及安装的大致时间。
我们分析了大量塔台——近600座。但这仍然远少于政府称目前运营的800座。而且我们对它们安装时间的估算并不精确。这意味着我们统计的超过1,050名在塔台附近死亡的人数存在漏报。我们也未能完全掌握边境沿线问题最严重的区域。
内部审计不会受到此类限制。理论上，CBP记录着每座塔台的启用时间和活跃时间。自2015年开始安装我们分析中所包含类型的塔台以来，它就有能力审计其有效性——同时量化在塔台附近死亡的人数。但消息人士告诉我们，该局从未进行过此类审计。我们的发现使这种审计的需求更加紧迫。
如果CBP要分析人员在其监控技术附近死亡的案例，它需要知道这些死亡发生的时间和地点。而目前用于追踪该数据的系统已经彻底失灵。
正如我们在方法论中所述，没有哪个国家机构收集并发布所有可用的移民死亡记录。我们仅德克萨斯州一地就筛选了数十个机构的数千页记录，由于缺乏在公共记录中记录这些死亡的共享协议，我们的画面仍然不完整。
边境巡逻队自2007年以来一直拥有自己的内部系统，称为“边境安全倡议跟踪系统”（BSITS）。但直到2021年，才确立了关于不同部门如何向该系统录入案件的国家规定。次年，美国政府问责局（GAO）发现，许多案件仍未在该系统中得到跟踪，尤其是那些未被边境巡逻队发现的死亡案例。2023年，GAO报告称，边境巡逻队已采取措施解决这一问题，但外部研究人员至今仍一致发现该机构的估算存在漏报现象。
除了追踪移民死亡人数外，美国海关及边境保卫局（CBP）还在2017年启动了一项名为“失踪移民计划”的项目以防止此类死亡。2025年4月，GAO发现该项目在收集和处理911报警电话和救援事件等数据的方式上有所改进。然而，GAO指出，问题在于缺乏利用这些数据来衡量该计划是否真正增加了救援次数或减少了死亡人数的计划，而这正是其主要目标。GAO提出了两项解决方案建议，但均未得到实施。
2014年，在“虚拟墙”规模尚小时，GAO建议边境巡逻队员记录某项技术如何帮助他们抓获试图非法进入美国的人员。这将花费特工额外的时间，但记录这些协助情况将有助于国会了解各种监控技术在多大程度上导致了实际逮捕。GAO补充道，一旦收集到这些数据，该机构应评估其监控技术是否有效。CBP表示同意，并开始要求特工录入此类信息。
2024年7月17日，美国边境巡逻队在靠近新墨西哥州桑兰德的边境非法越境者附近实施逮捕。GLENN FAWCETT / CBP 照片
随后，在2017年，GAO报告称所收集的数据不准确且不可靠；例如，它发现德克萨斯州的一些特工将数百次逮捕归功于某种特定类型的塔台，尽管该州境内根本不存在此类塔台。边境巡逻队再次表示将加以改进；它同意对特工进行培训，强调收集此类信息的重要性。
但多年后，据特工们告诉我们，这仍然不是优先事项。一位前CBP官员坦言，将该指令形容为“对着风吐口水”，并指出逮捕工作的混乱现实无法转化为整齐划一的指标。（该官员要求匿名，曾在拜登政府期间任职，且未被授权讨论敏感问题。）
此外，在2021年8月，即CBP同意这样做七年多之后，仍未发布任何关于这些塔台有效性的分析（GAO指出，它于2022年完成了一项分析，但结果并未公开）。
这意味着“虚拟墙”的扩张速度超过了对其影响进行评估的速度。
CBP还应在新死亡事件发生时进行检查，并确定这些事件是否发生在塔台或其他监控技术的可视范围内。对于确实发生在此类范围内的案例，该机构应查明为何未能更早发现这些人。
几位特工和官员告诉我们，如果边境巡逻队员遇到疑似在试图进入美国过程中死亡的遗体，并没有要求检查死者是否死于监控基础设施附近，也没有相应的流程来执行此类检查。这至少意味着关于死亡情况的潜在宝贵证据未被审查。这也意味着移民死亡事件并未被常规地视为“虚拟墙”可能失效的案例。
美国海关和边境保护局（CBP）应自动将其内部塔楼数据库中的每一条移民死亡记录进行比对，并调查那些发生在监控范围内的死亡事件，以确定系统检测到了什么，以及特工是否做出了适当的响应。特工在逮捕团伙或发现脚印等其他事件中，已经会记录GPS坐标。
如果没有这种检查，执法部门、法医调查人员以及家属可能永远无法得知有人在监控塔附近死亡——以及死亡前的关键时刻的录像可能存在。除非开启内部审查（通常仅针对羁押期间发生的死亡），否则CBP通常会在30天后删除来自这些塔楼的监控录像。至少，标记这些案件可以为调查死亡事件的人员保留录像，并给家属提供请求查看的机会。
此类审查还可能暴露出“虚拟墙”本身的缺陷。以我们在新墨西哥州发现的一个地点为例，尽管有先进的AI塔楼清晰可见，仍有数人在此丧生。他们在短短几个月内相继死亡，有时彼此相距仅几百英尺。调查这些案件可能会揭示，例如，摄像头在特定区域反复未能检测或识别人物，或者特工收到了警报却从未作出回应。
开展这些事后调查将是回答我们在对数百名在塔楼附近死亡的移民进行调查时，家属、研究人员和志愿者最常提出的问题的唯一途径：摄像头看到了他们，但无人前来？还是说根本没有人看到他们？
MIT Technology Review today published our investigation into how many people have died near the “virtual wall” of surveillance towers that the US government has installed along the US-Mexico border.
We found cases of people who walked undetected through areas surveilled by advanced, AI-enabled towers and later died nearby, where their bodies remained unnoticed for weeks or months. These cases reflect systemic flaws in the virtual wall: broken towers, algorithms that failed to detect people, and agents who simply did not respond to alerts.
This story is part of Dying on Camera , a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego . Journalists in both newsrooms spent the past year examining the failures of border surveillance technology and uncovering the stories of the people who die in the borderlands .
Each of these deaths should have raised alarms inside US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about the flaws in the agency’s surveillance network. This is particularly true for cases near the latest towers built by the defense company Anduril, which continues to win major contracts and is poised to benefit from the windfall of federal money slated for border security. The US is set to spend $1 billion to triple the size of the virtual wall by 2034.
Here are four ideas for what CBP should do next to address these failures.
In this June 16, 2021, file photo, a family from Venezuela moves to a Border Patrol transport vehicle after they and other migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and turned themselves in to agents in Del Rio, Texas. ERIC GAY/AP PHOTO
“If I were the federal government, I would do an audit, because this feels like it’s not working.”
That was New Mexico state representative Sarah Silva’s reaction when MIT Technology Review showed her that in 2024 alone, more than 18 people had died near surveillance towers in just one small stretch of desert near her district.
An audit is necessary because, despite poring over thousands of pages of police reports and other documents about surveillance towers, we have only limited knowledge of how many towers are out there and where they’re located.
CBP does not publish a comprehensive map of its virtual wall. We instead relied on mapping work led by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation and then used satellite imagery to verify where specific towers were and approximately when they were installed.
We analyzed lots of towers—nearly 600. But that’s still far less than the 800 the government says operate today. And our estimates of when they went up are inexact. That means our tally of more than 1,050 people who have died near them is an undercount. And we don’t have a complete picture of where along the border the problem is worst.
An internal audit would not have such limitations. In theory, CBP tracks when each tower went up and when it was active. It has had the ability to audit their effectiveness—while quantifying how many people have died near them—since at least 2015, when it began installing the types of towers included in our analysis. But sources told us it has never done such an audit. Our findings make the need for one more urgent.
If CBP is to analyze instances where people have died near its surveillance technology, it needs to know when and where those deaths happen. And the current system for tracking that data is beyond broken.
As we note in our methodology , there is no national agency that collects and publishes all available records on migrant deaths. We sifted through thousands of pages of records from dozens of agencies in Texas alone, and our picture is still incomplete owing to the lack of a shared protocol for documenting these deaths in public records.
Border Patrol has had its own internal system, called the Border Safety Initiative Tracking System (BSITS), in place since 2007. But it wasn't until 2021 that national rules were established for how different sectors should enter cases into the system. The next year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that many cases still weren't being tracked in this system, especially deaths that weren't discovered by Border Patrol. In 2023, the GAO reported that Border Patrol has taken steps to fix that, but outside researchers consistently find the agency’s estimates to be undercounts even today.
In addition to tracking migrant deaths, CBP launched a program in 2017 to prevent them, called the Missing Migrant Program. In April 2025, the GAO found the program was improving the way it collected and tracked data about events like 911 calls and rescues. The problem, it said, was that there was no plan in place to use the data to measure whether the program was actually increasing rescues or reducing deaths, which are its primary goals. It made two recommendations for solutions, neither of which has been implemented.
In 2014, when the virtual wall was much smaller, the GAO suggested that Border Patrol agents log when a piece of technology helped them apprehend someone who was trying to enter the US illegally. It would take agents some extra time, but logging these assists would help Congress understand how often various surveillance technologies were leading to actual apprehensions. Once this data was collected, GAO added, the agency should measure whether its surveillance technologies were working. CBP agreed, and it started requiring agents to enter such information.
U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehend people crossing the border illegally near Sunland Park, N.M., July 17, 2024. GLENN FAWCETT / CBP PHOTO
Then, in 2017, the GAO reported that the data being collected was inaccurate and unreliable; it found agents in Texas, for example, who were crediting a specific type of tower in apprehensions hundreds of times, even though no such towers existed anywhere in the state. Border Patrol again said it would improve; it agreed to train agents on the importance of collecting such information.
But years later, agents told us, it’s still not a priority. One former CBP official described the mandate as “spitting in the wind, to be honest,” and said the messy reality of apprehensions doesn't translate into neat metrics. (The official, who requested anonymity, served during the Biden administration and wasn’t authorized to discuss sensitive issues.)
And in August 2021, more than seven years after it agreed to do so, CBP still had not produced any analysis on the towers’ effectiveness (it finished one in 2022, the GAO notes, but the results are not public).
That means the virtual wall is growing faster than anyone is assessing its impact.
CBP should also examine new deaths as they occur and determine whether they happened within sight of a tower or other surveillance technology. And for those that did, the agency should determine why those people weren’t spotted sooner.
Several agents and officials told us that if Border Patrol agents come across the body of someone presumed to have died while crossing into the US, there’s no requirement to check whether that person died near surveillance infrastructure and no process for doing so. At a minimum, that means potentially valuable evidence about the death goes unexamined. It also means that migrant deaths are not routinely treated as possible failures of the virtual wall.
CBP should automatically check every migrant death against its internal database of towers and investigate those that occurred within surveillance range to determine what the system detected and whether agents responded appropriately. Agents already log GPS coordinates when they apprehend a group or encounter footprints, among other events.
Without that check, law enforcement, medical investigators, and families may never learn that someone died near a surveillance tower—and that footage of the moments leading up to the death may exist. CBP typically deletes surveillance footage from the towers after 30 days unless an internal review is opened, which usually happens only for deaths in custody. At a minimum, flagging these cases could preserve footage for those investigating the death and give families a chance to request it.
Such reviews could also expose flaws in the virtual wall itself. Consider one location we identified in New Mexico, where several people died despite being in clear sight of an advanced AI tower. They died within the span of a few months, sometimes just hundreds of feet from one another. Investigating these cases might reveal, for example, that a camera repeatedly failed to detect or identify people in a particular area, or that agents were alerted and simply never responded.
Carrying out these postmortem inquiries would be the only way to answer the question that families, researchers, and volunteers raised most frequently in our investigation into the hundreds of migrants who died near towers: Did the cameras see them, and nobody came? Or did nobody see them at all?
首次收录 · 2026-09-22 · 10.45 分