Border surveillance is inevitably used to commit racialized violence against migrants---an increase is the worst of all worlds.

Border Technology Exacerbates Racial Discrimination and Abuse Against Black Migrants

The United States has increasingly relied on digital technology to enforce its border externalization policies. The Biden administration has allocated substantial funds toward border security technology. “Smart borders” include “remote video surveillance, drones, automated license plate readers, motion sensors, [and] integrated fixed towers [IFTs].” At the U.S.-Mexico border IFTs are tall long-range structures that use cameras and radar to detect moving people and collect data about them for immigration enforcement. The United States also employs small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), a form of remote-operated drone originally designed for military operations, to identify and surveil migrants, facilitating their apprehension at the border. Such border surveillance technologies impinge on migrants’ privacy rights and can lead to increased violence and detention, and are a tool to externalize borders and impede migrants from entering the United States.

Upon arrival to the U.S.-Mexico border, some migrants are required to use CBP One, a mobile AI application implemented by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to submit their personal and biometric information to apply for asylum (or, previously, exceptions to Title 42). This app has come under scrutiny, including because it is less able to recognize the photos of Black and dark-skinned people, creating a barrier for them to access this portal to move their asylum applications forward. While the algorithms CBP One relies on are not publicly available, such facial recognition technology has been rejected as racially discriminatory in other contexts such as policing. For example, these algorithms have been found to inaccurately identify Black faces at a rate 10 to 100 times more than white faces.

Immigration officials continue to use technology to monitor migrants after they enter U.S. territory. This includes the Investigative Case Management System used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), software that gives ICE access to migrants’ personal and biometric information; as well as the use of mobile applications like SmartLink or electronic ankle monitors as alternatives to (immigration) detention. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is developing a Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART) to “aggregate and compare biometrics data including facial recognition, DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and voice prints—most often gathered without obtaining a warrant…[in order] to target immigrants for surveillance, raids, arrests, detention, and deportation.” Just as anti-Black racism operates in the criminal legal system, Black migrants face racial profiling, criminalization, and detention at disproportionate rates, and these technologies are another tool that perpetuates these differential outcomes in the U.S. immigration system.

Human Rights and Border Technology Policy-Making

As BAJI and the Promise Institute argued before the IACHR, the use of border technology exacerbates racial discrimination in U.S. immigration enforcement, particularly against Black migrants, as well as the racialized harms caused by U.S. border externalization. Border technology, as with technology in general, is often framed as “neutral,” “objective,” and “fair” – yet it has the “capacity to reproduce, reinforce and even exacerbate racial inequality within and across societies.” It is used for controlling, surveilling, and policing migrants. Despite claims that it makes immigration enforcement “safer,” smart borders are a form of deterrence that perpetuate the racial inequity at the heart of immigration laws, policies, practices, and enforcement.

Policymakers must act now to stop the racialized impacts of AI at the border. Necessary policy reforms include: the collection and publication of data about AI-enabled border technologies, their use, and the differential impacts on Black and other racialized groups; the development of effective measures for oversight and accountability; and the establishment of a global governance framework on the use of digital surveillance technologies. Ultimately, policymakers must acknowledge and address how AI-enabled technologies are perpetrating and exacerbating human rights abuses at the border.