This admin argued that children don't need basic hygiene products in detention centers, so this is pretty much in line with the MAGA dehumanization policies.
yes, I live in Mexico and have crossed the border multiple times. i also have a degree in anthropology based in Latin American studies. The vast majority of immigrants come through major population centers. Yours is truly an ignorant statement.
> I’m sure there’s a ton of people clamoring to give you a job.
You nailed that one. CIA, Homeland Security, FBI, military contractors, oil companies... actually knowing about the population you gather info about / enforce laws on / make deals with is increadably valuable, in demand knowledge at many levels of government and international industry!
The issue is that you believe things about immigration told to you by the same people who lied to your face for weeks that immigrants ate pets in Ohio.
Why would you believe anything else they ever say about immigrants? Yet here you are, mindlessly repeating their lies without even the slightest concern that your leaders and news sources are lying to your face about stuff as obvious as people eating pets.
I believed Obama when he said I could keep my doctor as well. BOTH sides lie. The answer is not left or right but the MIDDLE. We are a nation of laws, and no one is above the law. If you wanna come here. Come here legally.
90-95% of people could keep their doctor. And there were not weeks of bomb threats resulting directly from the “lie” that you can keep your doctor.
You are repeating right wing lies to defend why different right wing lies you can’t deny are lies can be ignored. Your claim about laws is meaning less since you don’t care what the law says you only care what your right wing leaders tell you it says and you don’t care if they lie to your face about everything they say.
Why wouldn’t we be embracing them and helping them instead?
Why are we so obsessed with borders on a spherical planet?
Why aren’t we working toward a world with freedom of movement, freedom to live and work anywhere you want?
Wouldn’t that be a better world than one where people have to sneak around, potentially dying just so they can have a better life?
The thing I hate the most about people who are anti-immigrant is that any legitimate reason they have to oppose immigrants can be addressed/figured out and made into a non-issue, and all that’s left when you peel apart the layers is bigotry and/or xenophobia.
We aren’t embracing them because by enlarge most of them are here for a better life, which I have no problem with, but they also drain the resources of those that pay taxes, both citizens and non-citizens
Estimates of the net annual fiscal cost of illegal (unauthorized) immigration to U.S. taxpayers typically range from roughly $100–150+ billion in recent analyses, with no single official government figure covering the full population at all levels of government. Figures vary substantially due to differences in estimated population size, which costs are counted (e.g., K-12 education of U.S.-born children, emergency medical care, law enforcement, welfare for eligible household members), taxes attributed to unauthorized immigrants, and whether the analysis is static/annual versus lifetime or includes broader economic effects. 
Commonly cited estimates
• FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2023 report using early-2023 data): Net cost of at least $150.7 billion per year at federal, state, and local levels. Gross expenditures ~$182 billion minus ~$31–32 billion in taxes paid. This covers an estimated 15.5+ million unauthorized immigrants plus ~5.4 million U.S.-born children. Major components include K-12 education (~$78 billion, mostly state/local), health care (~$43 billion), justice/enforcement, and various assistance programs. FAIR has noted the population and costs have grown further since (their later population estimate reached 18.6 million as of early 2025). Per-taxpayer estimates in the report were roughly $900–1,200 annually after taxes paid. 
• Heritage Foundation (recent analysis): Net fiscal cost of at least $110 billion per year for a population around 15.9 million. It notes that unauthorized immigrant households receive substantially more in benefits/services than they pay in taxes (roughly $2.40 in benefits per $1 in taxes in their framing) and references FAIR’s higher figure. Projections under continued high inflows suggested costs could rise toward $169 billion. 
• Other restrictionist-leaning or critical analyses (e.g., Center for Immigration Studies): Highlight large education costs (tens of billions for children of unauthorized immigrants), medical/uncompensated care, and welfare use by mixed-status households, with lifetime per-person net drains often estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars depending on education and other factors.
That $100–150B figure isn’t an established government estimate. It comes largely from politically aligned advocacy groups like FAIR and Heritage, not neutral government agencies, and their methodologies are highly disputed.
FAIR’s $150.7B figure also includes spending on 5.4 million U.S.-born citizen children. So presenting $100–150B as an established annual cost to American taxpayers is really misleading.
You can’t even come up with non-biased sources…
Maybe you are just a shitty bigot? Just like I said in my original comment. Peel back the layers and all that is left is bigots and racists and pieces of shit.
You don’t have to be one of the bad guys. You are choosing to align yourself with the wrong side dude.
The willful misunderstanding of the argument to argue about something else entirely is basically an admission that the answer is the obvious one, they don't care if people die.
Ok. If that helps you sleep at night, then all the best to you. It’s not that simple just because someone has an alternative point of view. No one wants them to die.
We have tons of border patrol messaging on social media. They very clearly don't care. https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes
When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses.
As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they were built by the defense tech company Anduril and equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. They transmit live video to nearby control rooms and can send alerts to the government-issued smartphones held by agents in the area, prompting the closest available to respond.
These AI-enabled towers are meant to give greater visibility across the 1,951-mile southern border, freeing up border agents from having to spend hours staring into video monitors. They were installed in this particular place to spot border crossers before they reached the nearby town of Sunland Park.
If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it.
That didn’t happen. Despite the nearby surveillance towers, it was employees of the local landfill, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted Morales that morning. At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol. Agents arrived 45 minutes later. He was dead. When an agent then called 911 to report the body, he said it was “probably one of the migrants crossing through there,” seemingly unaware that Morales had been moving near the agency’s surveillance systems earlier that day.
Morales had died just 360 feet from the closest surveillance tower. Two more towers stood watch to the east and the west. An autopsy later concluded that he had died of “environmental exposure.”
The towers surrounding Morales were only the latest addition to the “virtual wall” the government has spent 25 years and billions of dollars building along the entire border, which also includes earlier generations of towers with more basic features, as well as blimps, drones, seismic sensors, and even tunnel-sensing robots. Together, all this technology provides “persistent surveillance” and “situational awareness” to help the Border Patrol quickly and accurately detect people crossing and, crucially, make sure agents are sent to intercept them. CBP has also credited it with saving lives.
But a first-of-its-kind investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals that deaths like Morales’s are startlingly common.
I get it. I'm just saying, that there are active disincentives from the federal government to being a normal decent human being that may have played a role.
Money wont change the the incompetence of the people republicans hire for these jobs.
If you hire caring and capable people into a properly funded and regulated department with proper oversight (like Obama and Biden), there are no headlines to report... immigration is a boring topic generally.
The republicans want oppressive actions and headlines... so they only hire unqualified people. (racists, bigots, criminals, etc...) Then the existing oversight has to be cut to prevent scandals going public, which allows these idiot racist criminals they hired to run amuck over everyone's civil rights.
Welcome to the current administration's ICE Gestapo, full of proud boy's and their ilk - a literal domestic terrorist organization that attempted to overthrow the nation on Jan 6th at trump's request and later pardoned by trump, after being found guilty for those crimes leading up to and on Jan 6th.
The AI makes false positives. People working the post were already overworked so more having a machine that creates more tasks doesn't help. They probably aren't even close to the areas where the towers are, so responding is a pain. They stop responding to the machine.
If this is your definition of talking honestly I don't doubt that you have an issue with what you're seeing. Enforcing borders is the responsibility of nearly every country in human history.
schwelvis | 7 hours ago
you're working on the assumption that the border patrol cares about the life of a migrant. in their eyes dead simply means an interrupted immigration.
thefullhalf | 7 hours ago
This admin argued that children don't need basic hygiene products in detention centers, so this is pretty much in line with the MAGA dehumanization policies.
gwg576 | 7 hours ago
This is just an ignorant statement. Have you ever been to the border region?
The illegal crossers intentionally hide or use remote crossing spots far from civilization because they know that being caught means being sent back.
schwelvis | 6 hours ago
yes, I live in Mexico and have crossed the border multiple times. i also have a degree in anthropology based in Latin American studies. The vast majority of immigrants come through major population centers. Yours is truly an ignorant statement.
gwg576 | 4 hours ago
Good luck with your Latin American studies. I’m sure there’s a ton of people clamoring to give you a job.
sebwiers | 3 hours ago
> I’m sure there’s a ton of people clamoring to give you a job.
You nailed that one. CIA, Homeland Security, FBI, military contractors, oil companies... actually knowing about the population you gather info about / enforce laws on / make deals with is increadably valuable, in demand knowledge at many levels of government and international industry!
schwelvis | 3 hours ago
I'm already retired at 55 and living on the Gulf of Mexico after a successful professional life, thanks for your concern
TryingToWriteIt | 7 hours ago
^ big feeling about immigration from the immigrants-ate-pets-in-Ohio crowd
gwg576 | 7 hours ago
You can care about immigrants and not want them To eat household pets. Both can be true.
TryingToWriteIt | 6 hours ago
The issue is that you believe things about immigration told to you by the same people who lied to your face for weeks that immigrants ate pets in Ohio.
Why would you believe anything else they ever say about immigrants? Yet here you are, mindlessly repeating their lies without even the slightest concern that your leaders and news sources are lying to your face about stuff as obvious as people eating pets.
gwg576 | 4 hours ago
I believed Obama when he said I could keep my doctor as well. BOTH sides lie. The answer is not left or right but the MIDDLE. We are a nation of laws, and no one is above the law. If you wanna come here. Come here legally.
TryingToWriteIt | 3 hours ago
90-95% of people could keep their doctor. And there were not weeks of bomb threats resulting directly from the “lie” that you can keep your doctor.
You are repeating right wing lies to defend why different right wing lies you can’t deny are lies can be ignored. Your claim about laws is meaning less since you don’t care what the law says you only care what your right wing leaders tell you it says and you don’t care if they lie to your face about everything they say.
Islanduniverse | 6 hours ago
Why do you think they don’t want to be sent back?
Why wouldn’t we be embracing them and helping them instead?
Why are we so obsessed with borders on a spherical planet?
Why aren’t we working toward a world with freedom of movement, freedom to live and work anywhere you want?
Wouldn’t that be a better world than one where people have to sneak around, potentially dying just so they can have a better life?
The thing I hate the most about people who are anti-immigrant is that any legitimate reason they have to oppose immigrants can be addressed/figured out and made into a non-issue, and all that’s left when you peel apart the layers is bigotry and/or xenophobia.
gwg576 | 4 hours ago
We aren’t embracing them because by enlarge most of them are here for a better life, which I have no problem with, but they also drain the resources of those that pay taxes, both citizens and non-citizens
Islanduniverse | 3 hours ago
No they don’t.
Undocumented immigrants bring in nearly $100 billion a year to the economy.
They are not a drain at all. That’s a lie that racists and bigots perpetuate.
Are you willing to admit you are wrong? Does it change your mind?
gwg576 | 3 hours ago
Estimates of the net annual fiscal cost of illegal (unauthorized) immigration to U.S. taxpayers typically range from roughly $100–150+ billion in recent analyses, with no single official government figure covering the full population at all levels of government. Figures vary substantially due to differences in estimated population size, which costs are counted (e.g., K-12 education of U.S.-born children, emergency medical care, law enforcement, welfare for eligible household members), taxes attributed to unauthorized immigrants, and whether the analysis is static/annual versus lifetime or includes broader economic effects. 
Commonly cited estimates
• FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2023 report using early-2023 data): Net cost of at least $150.7 billion per year at federal, state, and local levels. Gross expenditures ~$182 billion minus ~$31–32 billion in taxes paid. This covers an estimated 15.5+ million unauthorized immigrants plus ~5.4 million U.S.-born children. Major components include K-12 education (~$78 billion, mostly state/local), health care (~$43 billion), justice/enforcement, and various assistance programs. FAIR has noted the population and costs have grown further since (their later population estimate reached 18.6 million as of early 2025). Per-taxpayer estimates in the report were roughly $900–1,200 annually after taxes paid. 
• Heritage Foundation (recent analysis): Net fiscal cost of at least $110 billion per year for a population around 15.9 million. It notes that unauthorized immigrant households receive substantially more in benefits/services than they pay in taxes (roughly $2.40 in benefits per $1 in taxes in their framing) and references FAIR’s higher figure. Projections under continued high inflows suggested costs could rise toward $169 billion. 
• Other restrictionist-leaning or critical analyses (e.g., Center for Immigration Studies): Highlight large education costs (tens of billions for children of unauthorized immigrants), medical/uncompensated care, and welfare use by mixed-status households, with lifetime per-person net drains often estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars depending on education and other factors.
Islanduniverse | 3 hours ago
Lmfao!
That $100–150B figure isn’t an established government estimate. It comes largely from politically aligned advocacy groups like FAIR and Heritage, not neutral government agencies, and their methodologies are highly disputed.
FAIR’s $150.7B figure also includes spending on 5.4 million U.S.-born citizen children. So presenting $100–150B as an established annual cost to American taxpayers is really misleading.
You can’t even come up with non-biased sources…
Maybe you are just a shitty bigot? Just like I said in my original comment. Peel back the layers and all that is left is bigots and racists and pieces of shit.
You don’t have to be one of the bad guys. You are choosing to align yourself with the wrong side dude.
elmonoenano | 4 hours ago
The willful misunderstanding of the argument to argue about something else entirely is basically an admission that the answer is the obvious one, they don't care if people die.
gwg576 | 4 hours ago
Ok. If that helps you sleep at night, then all the best to you. It’s not that simple just because someone has an alternative point of view. No one wants them to die.
elmonoenano | 3 hours ago
We have tons of border patrol messaging on social media. They very clearly don't care. https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrant-deaths-post-sexist-memes
[OP] techreview | 8 hours ago
When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses.
As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they were built by the defense tech company Anduril and equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. They transmit live video to nearby control rooms and can send alerts to the government-issued smartphones held by agents in the area, prompting the closest available to respond.
These AI-enabled towers are meant to give greater visibility across the 1,951-mile southern border, freeing up border agents from having to spend hours staring into video monitors. They were installed in this particular place to spot border crossers before they reached the nearby town of Sunland Park.
If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it.
That didn’t happen. Despite the nearby surveillance towers, it was employees of the local landfill, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted Morales that morning. At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol. Agents arrived 45 minutes later. He was dead. When an agent then called 911 to report the body, he said it was “probably one of the migrants crossing through there,” seemingly unaware that Morales had been moving near the agency’s surveillance systems earlier that day.
Morales had died just 360 feet from the closest surveillance tower. Two more towers stood watch to the east and the west. An autopsy later concluded that he had died of “environmental exposure.”
The towers surrounding Morales were only the latest addition to the “virtual wall” the government has spent 25 years and billions of dollars building along the entire border, which also includes earlier generations of towers with more basic features, as well as blimps, drones, seismic sensors, and even tunnel-sensing robots. Together, all this technology provides “persistent surveillance” and “situational awareness” to help the Border Patrol quickly and accurately detect people crossing and, crucially, make sure agents are sent to intercept them. CBP has also credited it with saving lives.
But a first-of-its-kind investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals that deaths like Morales’s are startlingly common.
Bloodweiler | 8 hours ago
"At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol."
Wait, the workers at the landfill saw him flat out on the ground and just left him there for three hours???
UnlamentedLord | 5 hours ago
They were probably sympathetic to him, didn't want him to get caught and thought he was resting.
They only called CBP when they realized something was definitely wrong.
Bloodweiler | 5 hours ago
If that were the case, surely they could've helped move him to the shade and given him some water?
elmonoenano | 3 hours ago
There's criminal penalties in assisting migrants. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/members-group-giving-food-water-migrants-convicted-misdemeanors-n960816
InVultusSolis | 3 hours ago
I would absolutely never ever let a law like that prevent me from saving someone's life. Let a jury convict me of that shit if necessary.
elmonoenano | 3 hours ago
I get it. I'm just saying, that there are active disincentives from the federal government to being a normal decent human being that may have played a role.
Zetesofos | 7 hours ago
Answer to Headline: Because that's not what its designed or intended to do.
Next question.
AltoidStrong | 4 hours ago
Money wont change the the incompetence of the people republicans hire for these jobs.
If you hire caring and capable people into a properly funded and regulated department with proper oversight (like Obama and Biden), there are no headlines to report... immigration is a boring topic generally.
The republicans want oppressive actions and headlines... so they only hire unqualified people. (racists, bigots, criminals, etc...) Then the existing oversight has to be cut to prevent scandals going public, which allows these idiot racist criminals they hired to run amuck over everyone's civil rights.
Welcome to the current administration's ICE Gestapo, full of proud boy's and their ilk - a literal domestic terrorist organization that attempted to overthrow the nation on Jan 6th at trump's request and later pardoned by trump, after being found guilty for those crimes leading up to and on Jan 6th.
Super_Range45 | 5 hours ago
The AI makes false positives. People working the post were already overworked so more having a machine that creates more tasks doesn't help. They probably aren't even close to the areas where the towers are, so responding is a pain. They stop responding to the machine.
Bawbawian | 6 hours ago
the goal isn't to solve problems.
the goal is to use a paramilitary group to try and foment civil unrest.
we can't even talk honestly about what is happening we definitely aren't ready to fix this mess.
exlushdad | 4 hours ago
If this is your definition of talking honestly I don't doubt that you have an issue with what you're seeing. Enforcing borders is the responsibility of nearly every country in human history.
clean-links | 8 hours ago
Cleaned link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/21/1144166/border-towers-surveillance-investigation/
Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).