MIT probe ties Anduril border towers to 1,050+ deaths

The investigation grew out of a year-long collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego, examining how the virtual wall performs when it matters most. The newsrooms found cases where people walked undetected through areas monitored by advanced, AI-enabled towers and later died nearby, with bodies remaining unnoticed for weeks or months. The failures were systemic: broken towers, algorithms that missed people, and agents who did not respond to alerts.

What makes the findings pointed is the timing. The towers built by the defense company Anduril are the newest additions to the network, and Anduril continues to win major contracts while federal money for border security is set to expand. Yet the investigation shows that, despite poring over thousands of pages of records, the public still has only a limited picture of how many towers stand and where. That gap matters because the tally of more than 1,050 deaths near towers is itself an undercount, and no one has a complete view of where along the border the problem is worst.

The article proposes four fixes: a comprehensive audit of deaths near the virtual wall, an overhaul of how migrant deaths are tracked, better logging of technology-assisted apprehensions, and investigations into whether deaths occurred within surveillance range. Each hinges on CBP acting on information it largely already collects. Whether the agency adopts any of them is likely to shape how much families and investigators can learn about what the cameras saw, and whether anyone came.