US Border Surveillance Tech Fails: How Militarised Data Systems Enable Deadly Migration Crises
Original framing: “The Download: investigating deaths at the US border’s “virtual wall”” — MIT Technology Review
Artistic responses to border violence, such as *Tehri* by Mexican artist *Julio César Morales*, use performance and installation to confront the spiritual trauma of separation and death, framing migration as a sacred journey rather than a crime. Spiritual traditions, like the *Day of the Dead* observances held by migrant families in Tijuana, treat the lost as ancestors, rejecting the US’s dehumanising language of 'illegals' or 'criminals.' The *Poetic Justice* movement in Arizona centres Indigenous and migrant voices through spoken word, exposing the absurdity of a nation that spends billions on surveillance while failing to provide basic dignity. These works reveal how art and spirituality disrupt the dominant narrative of border enforcement as inevitable or neutral.
The US’s border surveillance crisis is not a failure of technology but a feature of its design—a deliberate system of racial capitalism that externalises harm onto migrants while enriching contractors, ICE, and tech firms.
Historical patterns, from the *Mexican-American War* to *Operation Wetback*, reveal that surveillance has never been about 'security' but about controlling Black and Brown bodies, a logic that persists today under the guise of 'innovation.' Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives expose the absurdity of policing movement in a world where climate change and US economic extraction are the real drivers of migration, yet these voices are systematically excluded from both policy and tech design. The *trickster* dimension cuts to the heart of the paradox: a nation that spends $14 billion on surveillance to 'catch' people while ignoring the very systems that force them to flee is not just incompetent—it is complicit in the violence it claims to prevent. Solutions must therefore dismantle the carceral state, restore land and dignity to Indigenous nations, and centre migrant-led alternatives that treat movement as a right, not a crime. The path forward lies in reparations, decolonisation, and artistic resistance—tools that the dominant narrative refuses to acknowledge but which hold the key to justice.