She had only walked for a couple of hours, and already she was lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was early afternoon on Sept. 14, 2025, when 30-year-old Graciela G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez crossed the border from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California, sending voice messages to her mother and sister as she walked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n
This story is part of\u00a0Dying on Camera, a collaboration between\u00a0MIT Technology Review<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Times of San Diego<\/em>. 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.<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez did not tell her family about her plan until the day before. Once she arrived in California, she hoped to work and send money back to her three children and her parents in southern Mexico. Her oldest son, age 11, had asked for a bicycle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n She either climbed a ladder over the border wall or slipped through a section\u00a0in steep terrain where fencing has yet to be built. Dozens of game trails cut through the dust on hillsides of sagebrush and manzanita. It was the first segment of a hike through the Otay Mountain Wilderness.\u00a0<\/p>\n The eastern edge of San Diego is just a mile away, but countless migrants hike 10 or 20 miles north through the mountains to evade the Border Patrol, emerging in smaller towns and on distant highways with fewer checkpoints.<\/p>\n ANNIE BARKER\/TIMES OF SAN DIEGO\/CATCHLIGHT LOCAL\/REPORT FOR AMERICA<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Between 2 and 3 p.m., her sister said, G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez sent a final message to her mother. \u201cI can\u2019t do it anymore,\u201d she whispered into her phone. By the time a forensic crew came to collect her, two weeks later, most of her body had disappeared into the earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n She died on her own, but she was not, strictly speaking, alone. She was in one of the most heavily surveilled strips of land in the world.<\/p>\n Before she died, G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez told her family in a WhatsApp message that she could see helicopters overhead and white Border Patrol trucks making periodic laps on the road below. And even if none of those agents saw her or knew she was in distress, something else had a clear view. Supervising the whole territory, from a nearby hilltop, was a slender gray surveillance tower.\u00a0<\/p>\n That tower, made by General Dynamics and in place since 2019, boasts two sets of electro-optical and infrared cameras with long-range lenses that can track targets 5 to 7 miles away. G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez was just one mile away.\u00a0<\/p>\n Surveillance towers have proliferated in recent years, as contractors added newer camera systems that use artificial intelligence to distinguish border-crossers from other people and animals, and track their movements, at an overall cost of more than a billion dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet as the cameras scan the terrain, migrants continue to die in plain sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thousands of migrants have died while crossing the border in the past two decades, many of them near to Border Patrol surveillance installations. But the phenomenon is especially pronounced in the Otay Mountain Wilderness, just outside San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Times of San Diego<\/em> analysis counted hundreds of cases along the California border\u2014including at least 138 in the past four years\u2014where migrants\u2019 remains were found within the range of the very cameras designed to help track and intercept them.\u00a0<\/p>\n A topographical analysis conducted as part of an MIT Technology Review<\/em> investigation estimated that more than half of these remains were found in a spot where a camera would have a clear view of a person, without terrain blocking the line of sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of these migrants died swiftly, falling from the border wall or drowning in a canal or river. But dozens suffered slow deaths of exposure in the wilderness, deaths that might have been averted with emergency aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n People who died in Southern California came from just across the border, or from as far away as Africa. They were as old as 70 and as young as 5. They died in the heat or the cold. But they all died within range of a surveillance camera.<\/p>\n Found in July 2023: Marcia Dutra, a 36-year-old woman from Brazil who likely died of heat exposure next to a border fence. According to a medical examiner\u2019s report, a group of migrants told the Border Patrol about her body when they were apprehended. An AI-equipped surveillance tower sits 2,000 feet northeast above the edge of a plateau, out of sight of the slope where she was found.\u00a0<\/p>\n Found in February 2024: Elvi Vasquez Bortolon, a 28-year-old Mexican man who died of suspected hypothermia on a ridge near the border wall. He had been dead for more than five days when a Border Patrol agent in a helicopter spotted his body from above. A remote video tower stands about 1,400 feet away, hidden from view by the ridge above the canyon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Found in August 2024: Ram\u00f3n Montenegro, a 51-year-old man from Mexico who died of possible heatstroke in the mountains near Dulzura. An AI surveillance tower, invisible on the other side of a hill, sits 1,300 feet away \u2014 roughly the length of the parking lot at the San Diego Zoo.\u00a0<\/p>\n More than 120 surveillance towers stand along the California border, according to documents and live observations collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n The towers are not the only form of surveillance in the region. The border is blanketed by an interconnected network of trail cameras, underground movement detectors, radar, infrared sensors, drones, and even blimps. In March 2025, the Trump administration directed the Department of Defense to use satellites to watch the border as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even when mountains or vegetation block a tower\u2019s view, other devices may pick up the trail. Local advocates say surveillance technology in the Otay Mountain Wilderness is almost unavoidable.\u00a0<\/p>\n ANNIE BARKER\/TIMES OF SAN DIEGO\/CATCHLIGHT LOCAL\/REPORT FOR AMERICA<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Officials say the towers particularly excel at tracking passing migrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anduril, the company that makes about half the towers now installed at the U.S.-Mexico border, said in a news release in 2024 that their towers \u201cdirectly contributed to saving lives and stopping illicit drugs from entering the U.S.\u201d In June 2026, the company said its installations had \u201cautonomously identified hundreds of thousands of border crossings.\u201d<\/p>\n John Morris, a Border Patrol sector chief in Arizona, told media at a convention in May 2026 that \u201cWe\u2019re dang close to pretty much knowing everything that comes across.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The proximity of so many deaths to high-resolution cameras leaves two distinct possibilities: Either the system didn\u2019t detect these people in distress, or it did detect them\u2014and officials offered no response.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anduril, the defense contracting company that manufactures the AI-enabled towers, did not respond to questions from Times of San Diego<\/em> about the towers\u2019 performance in mountainous terrain.<\/p>\n A representative of General Dynamics, which made the tower closest to G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s body, referred all questions to the Border Patrol.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Border Patrol did not respond to questions from Times of San Diego<\/em> regarding whether surveillance towers spotted G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez prior to her death, or about how surveillance cameras in general are used to detect people in emergency situations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rafael Hern\u00e1ndez Larraenza, the leader of a search and rescue group, Desert Angels, says he believes some of the towers are \u201cjust adornment,\u201d and are not actually effective at tracking migrants. He also says that Border Patrol agents, in occasional meetings with his search group, \u201csay they don\u2019t have the opportunity to do searches, that they don\u2019t have enough time.\u201d<\/p>\n People in need of rescue \u201care not a priority,\u201d said Bryce Peterson, who compiles research on migrant remains for the advocacy group No More Deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n From the spot where Graciela G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s body was found, a surveillance tower stands in clear view.\u00a0<\/p>\n That tower is one mile away. A second, newer tower, on the other side of a hill, sits 1.4 miles away. Both are equipped with slow-spinning, long-range cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n The closer of these two towers is situated between two layers of border fencing, a long pole, over 100 feet tall, reaching into the sky. It peers not only onto hillsides where migrants walk, but into the brightly-colored cinderblock homes of a Tijuana neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second tower is much shorter, just 33 feet tall, surveying the canyon where G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez would most likely have arrived if she had kept walking.\u00a0<\/p>\n This new tower, built by a company called Anduril, decides for itself whether a moving object in the field is relevant. The two dark, round cameras on the pole give the impression of eyes, rotating slowly, and then locking in on a target, before swiveling elsewhere.<\/p>\n ANNIE BARKER\/TIMES OF SAN DIEGO\/CATCHLIGHT LOCAL\/REPORT FOR AMERICA<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Osvaldo Ruiz, the volunteer coordinator for the Border Angels, a group that leaves water and supplies along migrant trails near San Diego, says the Otay Mountain wilderness has \u201cbeacons throughout the mountains\u201d that \u201ccan see over a lot of the mountains facing the border.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt entry sites that migrants or travelers may come through, there are also hidden cameras inside of rocks or inside of bushes that are camouflaged for you not to see. And then there\u2019s also the cameras that you see on the road. They have license plate readers that are stuck on the back of a safety cone, so (it detects) as you\u2019re driving away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n Surveillance towers have been in the area since 2011, with frequent new installations, including the introduction of AI-directed towers in 2018. Many of the AI-equipped towers currently overseeing the California borderlands appeared in 2021, and were updated with longer ranges in 2026.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Officials from the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report in June 2026 that the Border Patrol currently has 803 fielded towers \u201cand plans to deliver another 175,\u201d across the southwestern border, an initiative that would cost $1.4 billion. The report also notes that the agency expects a billion dollars in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. By 2034, the number of towers is expected to rise to 2,300.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we are building along the southwest border is a smart system. There\u2019s technology embedded in it, plus the physical infrastructure,\u201d border czar Tom Homan said at a press conference in San Diego in December 2025. \u201cIt makes every single agent and officer more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n Like so many migrants, Graciela\u2019s hike into the U.S. began in desperation. Her husband, who had already crossed the border to find work, had stopped sending money for the children.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere were moments when they didn\u2019t have enough money even for a bag of detergent, or to eat,\u201d her sister, Irma, told Times of San Diego<\/em>. \u201cShe would call me crying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez decided she needed to come to the United States, if only temporarily, to make money. Her family was uniformly against the decision, so she kept her plan a secret until she was already at the border, preparing to cross.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a very humble person,\u201d Irma said. \u201cShe was kind to people, and loving with her children.\u201d<\/p>\n G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez paid 20,000 pesos, about $1,150, for smugglers to help her cross the border, much lower than the current average, which sits at $12,000. But she would need to travel on her own without a guide, paying only for the knowledge of where and when to start, and which direction to walk. As part of their deal, her phone would send location pings back to the smugglers\u2019 hiding spot in Tijuana.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cesar Ortigoza, a leader of a search group known as the Armadillos, has been locating migrant remains in the region <\/strong>since 2010.\u00a0<\/p>\n ANNIE BARKER\/TIMES OF SAN DIEGO\/CATCHLIGHT LOCAL\/REPORT FOR AMERICA<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n \u201cMost people don\u2019t understand the magnitude of this territory, and all the work it\u2019s going to cost them to arrive at their destination. They get to the top of this mountain and realize there\u2019s miles and miles and miles left to walk,\u201d Ortigoza said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition, they need to avoid capture. \u201cThey go really fast,\u201d he said, \u201cand there\u2019s a lot of pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n On the afternoon of September 14, 2025, G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez told her mother and sister through WhatsApp voice messages that she had successfully crossed the border into the United States.<\/p>\n These short snippets of audio would be their only clues to what happened next.\u00a0<\/p>\n The hillside where G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez walked that afternoon is exposed on all sides, with a panoramic view of the border wall just a couple hundred yards away. But on the other side of the hill is a daunting, mountainous wilderness, covered in low trees and rocky ravines, with hidden, winding trails, stretching into the distance. It is possible she saw this and turned around, convinced she was lost. Wandering the hillsides in the afternoon heat without sufficient water, she could succumb to dehydration within hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of the heat, there are places where you can\u2019t move forward even half a mile in an hour,\u201d said Larraenza, the search and rescue leader.\u00a0<\/p>\n By 2 p.m., \u201cShe told me she felt very tired and couldn\u2019t go any further,\u201d Irma said. \u201cI told her to give it her all, to think of her children, keep them in her mind so she could get out of there.\u201d Irma says 4 p.m. was the last time her sister\u2019s location was transmitted to the smugglers.\u00a0<\/p>\n After hearing about G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s case, Ortigoza said it \u201cseemed strange,\u201d because she was \u201cso close to the border\u201d at her last known location.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Bryce Peterson, the No More Deaths volunteer who collects autopsy reports on migrant remains border-wide, said \u201cThere\u2019s a million ways that somebody could be already on the verge of death that close to the wall. Like if you\u2019re going north and then you decide to go south again because you get lost or something.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing we\u2019re certain of is that she suffered in her last moments,\u201d Ortigoza said. \u201cJust knowing that you\u2019re alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Walking on the hillside, G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez encountered a man also traversing the trails, lined with dry shrubs. \u201cIn one of the messages sent, where she told me to pray for her, the man spoke and said \u2018there isn\u2019t time,\u2019\u201d Irma said.\u00a0<\/p>\n After that, Graciela\u2019s phone still received messages, but she did not respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even though the federal <\/strong>surveillance tower was just a mile away, it is possible the cameras did not see G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez. It is possible they did not see much of anything.\u00a0<\/p>\n An internal memo obtained by NBC News in October 2024 revealed that 30% of the older-style towers, the kind that require agents in control rooms to review footage, were broken. Most were missing parts, or their equipment was outdated and unusable. These 150 broken towers still stood at the border, acting as million-dollar scarecrows.\u00a0<\/p>\n Officials from the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report in September 2025 that the Customs and Border Protection had begun to fix the towers with spare parts and revamp them with new technology, but did not list how many remained out of commission.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Border Patrol did not respond to questions from Times of San Diego<\/em> about whether the tower in view of where G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez died was operational at the time of her death.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dave Maass, the director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organization that maps surveillance towers at the border, questions the functionality of all types of towers. \u201cNone of these systems have been effective. There\u2019s no independent evaluation of how many things they\u2019re capturing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a report published in March 2026, a representative of the US Military notes that a mission to place 7 G-BOSS(E) towers in the Otay Mountain Wilderness, an installation that took place in the months prior to G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s death, faced operational challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n The combat-grade military surveillance towers were vulnerable to tipping over, damage from rodents, exhaust blowouts, and running out of battery. On a dirt road in the mountains, a truck carrying a surveillance tower bounced around, which led to the tower\u2019s cameras \u201cbecoming stuck in a zoomed-in position.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite descriptions from manufacturers claiming dominance in \u201crugged terrain,\u201d Osvaldo Ru\u00edz, the Border Angels coordinator, said it would still be difficult for a surveillance tower to track migrants moving through the Otay Mountain Wilderness. \u201cWith all that surveillance that’s out in the mountains, there’s still a lot of brush and high covered areas that would make it easy [to stay undercover].\u201d<\/p>\n Analysts from the RAND Corporation, a foreign policy think tank, wrote in a report in 2020 that \u201coutcomes and outputs\u201d that would indicate the success of surveillance towers \u201care not directly observable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The analysts conceded that the towers\u2019 presence would urge migrants to stay out of the area and funnel into undetected routes. \u201cThe likely deterrent effect on migrant crossings through surveilled areas overwhelms any boost to situational awareness,\u201d that the towers provide, the analysts wrote. In this way, the surveillance towers\u2019 most useful quality was the threat conveyed through their technology, rather than the merit of the technology itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n Due to increased surveillance, \u201cPeople are crossing through areas that are further out and more extreme, where we have very little hope of finding them in a search,\u201d Larraenza said.\u00a0<\/p>\n ANNIE BARKER\/TIMES OF SAN DIEGO\/CATCHLIGHT LOCAL\/REPORT FOR AMERICA<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n And though the manufacturer says the AI-enabled towers, which now make up over half of the total, can identify migrants on their own, apprehensions still require human labor. A CBP official told the RAND analysts that smugglers began sending migrants across the border alone, rather than in groups, to overwhelm the surveillance towers with many individual targets, leading to more alerts than agents capable of following them.\u00a0<\/p>\n So it is possible the towers in the vicinity did capture footage of G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez, but agents decided not to apprehend her. Just hours before her death, she sent a message saying that there were \u201cpolice\u201d nearby, possibly referring to Border Patrol agents in trucks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEven one person who\u2019s not sick, one person who is just hiking on their own, often Border Patrol will just ignore them because it\u2019s not worth their time to just only catch one person,\u201d said Peterson of No More Deaths. \u201cThey want to be able to catch a whole group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Larraenza said he\u2019s found dehydrated people on migrant trails who say they called out to Border Patrol, and the agents failed to stop. \u201cBut there are also cases where agents do the impossible to find someone,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n On one occasion in September 2024, while rescuing a family of five in the Otay Mountain Wilderness, Larraenza met a person wearing a vest labeled \u201cSHERIFF\u201d on the trail. In a video that Larraenza posted to his Facebook account, when asked if the Border Patrol would arrive to take the family into custody, the deputy says, \u201cOh, they don\u2019t come out here.\u201d<\/p>\n On a recent visit to the spot where G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez died, multiple Border Patrol trucks were visible just hundreds of yards away, rolling slowly along the wall, or parked on the hill next to the surveillance tower.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf we hadn\u2019t sent the Border Patrol the coordinates, they never would have bothered to go [find G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s body],\u201d Ortigoza said.<\/p>\n Irma sent her sister a barrage of messages that afternoon and evening, pleading with her to send her location, but there was no response.<\/p>\n Irma believes it\u2019s possible her sister was killed or abandoned by the other migrant she was traveling with during her final hours, because she was not walking fast enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n It took Irma two weeks to make contact with the coyotes. When she told the smugglers that her sister was missing, \u201cthey didn\u2019t move a single finger,\u201d she said. She threatened to send one coyote\u2019s phone number to the police, until he sent her a screenshot of Graciela\u2019s last known location.\u00a0<\/p>\n Almost three weeks after Graciela G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s final message to her mother, on October 3, 2025, the Armadillo search group sent the last known GPS coordinates of her phone to the Border Patrol.\u00a0<\/p>\n The medical investigator\u2019s report states that G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez sent her location to her family, and her relatives sent the coordinates to a search group while she remained alive, but both Irma and Ortigoza said they did not know her location for weeks, and neither was interviewed for the examiner\u2019s report.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOn 10\/04\/2025 at 11:16 hours, I arrived on a dirt path approximately 100 yards north of the United States\/Mexico International border. The area consisted of shrubs and dried brush with steep hills and declines,\u201d Jennifer Wright, the medical examiner, wrote in an autopsy report. \u201cUpon further review, I viewed the skeletonized remains of an apparent female lying supine in the dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n The body had decomposed quickly with the help of the sun and animals, so it was impossible to tell whether G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez was the victim of murder or dehydration. But the medical examiner noted that there was no water or food in the vicinity.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a pile next to the decedent was a purple bra, black pants, a black floral shirt, and a dark colored long sleeve shirt. The bra was hooked closed and intact,\u201d Wright, the medical examiner, wrote in her report. \u201cIn the rear pants pockets were Mexican paper currency, Mexican coins, bobby pins, and tweezers.\u201d<\/p>\n The body was naked, but it was unclear whether someone else removed G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s clothes, or whether she took them off herself in the final throes of dehydration delirium, a common symptom immediately preceding organ failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n Several yards from the place where she died, Ortigoza found a backpack with a bottle of women\u2019s spray deodorant, and a small glass container of perfume.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get to one of these sites, and you see the situation, the loneliness, the environment, you start wondering, what was this person thinking in their last moments?\u201d Larraenza said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once a DNA test confirmed the identity of the remains, Irma paid over $4,000 to send her sister\u2019s bones home to Mexico, where the family held a funeral nine months after her death.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes her oldest son, he just sits there thinking and when we ask what\u2019s wrong, he says he misses his mom,\u201d Irma said. Though the family is heartbroken, everyone has pitched in to care for Graciela\u2019s children. \u201cI don\u2019t let my parents see me cry,\u201d Irma said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Border Patrol gave permission to Ortigoza and a group of searchers to place a cross next to where G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez was discovered. On a recent trip to the memorial to leave flowers, Ortigoza played a voice message that Irma sent to her sister, the sound vibrating into the dirt of the hillside, where the imprint of G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s body is still visible nearly a year after its removal.<\/p>\n ANNIE BARKER\/TIMES OF SAN DIEGO\/CATCHLIGHT LOCAL\/REPORT FOR AMERICA<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n \u201cI know that in the place you\u2019re in, there isn\u2019t suffering, like how you suffered here on this earth,\u201d Irma said. \u201cI know you left thinking about your children. I know you wanted to give them a better life. I feel you here, and I feel you alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Cesar Ortigoza says every day he gets as many as five calls from people looking for their missing family members at the border. Though numbers of border crossings, and numbers of reported deaths, have decreased since Donald Trump took office in January 2025, \u201cThere are still a lot of people on the other side trying to get here. Because the problems in their countries persist,\u201d Ortigoza said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the first half of 2026, fewer people have consumed the water bottles, Gatorade and cans of food left by Border Angels volunteers in the Otay Mountain Wilderness. But supplies left on other routes by different groups have seen increased consumption, evidence that migration patterns are constantly evolving.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to really understand how people are crossing, but I know they are,\u201d Ru\u00edz said.<\/p>\n Peterson, the No More Deaths map-maker, said more migrants could die in the coming months and years, as a result of increased surveillance. In the past, after surveillance towers were installed, migrants would try to go around them, leading to longer and more dangerous routes through stretches of remote wilderness. With the installation of hundreds of new towers, the spaces outside the range of detection have thinned, leading some migrants to attempt to go through surveilled territory, rather than around it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen people do things that to me seem terrifying or crazy, like going past an area where they know there are sensors and then trying to really quickly get to the next safe-ish place before Border Patrol shows up to get them, because it takes 15 minutes for them to show up,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cIt seems like people aren\u2019t stopping to drink water. People are going really fast, often running even, moving much more quickly, not being able to take the time to take care of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Larraenza says for this same reason, migrants often choose to cross the border in the hottest weeks of the year, when they believe fewer agents will be\u00a0on patrol, but there is a greater risk of death. In an interview in mid-September, Larraenza said at least two people had gone missing in the Otay Mountain wilderness in the past few weeks, and he had not yet been able to find their remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ortigoza says G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s story is an example of a decades-long trend of people putting their lives at risk to cross the border out of necessity. The surveillance towers, whether or not they were functional, did not stop G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez from crossing the border in that area, and did not stop her from dying. \u201cIf the riches of the world were distributed more equitably, we wouldn\u2019t have to do things like this to reach a better life,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n While placing flowers in July at the site of G\u00f3mez Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s death, Ortigoza noticed a Border Patrol truck parked under the surveillance tower on the hilltop a mile to the east. An agent stood on a power lift, working on the tower\u2019s cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n This year, agents replaced dozens of these cameras with new, AI models.\u00a0<\/p>\n Times of San Diego<\/em>\u2019s analysis relied on publicly available data from various sources, starting with records that document the deaths of border-crossers.\u00a0<\/p>\n No More Deaths, a longstanding border activist group, has compiled information on such deaths for years. In California, their efforts use data from the San Diego County Medical Examiner\u2019s Office and the Imperial County Coroner\u2019s Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n In San Diego County, the group says, it obtained lists and narratives for \u201call deaths related to border-crossings.\u201d The data was detailed, but it was unclear how the medical examiner\u2019s office ensured it had identified all cases involving border-crossers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In Imperial County, the group said, its requests were disregarded, and it ultimately brought a legal claim. In response, the county provided a list of deaths \u201cwith minimal data and no explanation for how the records custodian had compiled the data.\u201d Since then, the group says, it has been adding details by requesting coroner\u2019s reports for each individual case.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even if both counties\u2019 records are complete, the remains of other missing migrants have yet to be found, so the list is very likely an undercount.<\/p>\n Times of San Diego<\/em> focused on migrant deaths starting in 2022, just after a dramatic increase in the number of towers installed in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for human and constitutional rights, catalogs each surveillance tower with in-person and satellite image verification.<\/p>\n Times of San Diego<\/em> analyzed the location data for each death and the nearest surveillance tower. Each pairing of a death location and a tower within surveillance range was confirmed by hand on maps of each location. The analysis also examined time-stamped satellite imagery to verify each tower was in place at the time each body was found.\u00a0<\/p>\n From 2022 through 2025, Times of San Diego<\/em>\u2019s analysis found that at least 138 people died within the nominal range of a nearby surveillance tower.\u00a0<\/p>\n Proximity to a tower isn\u2019t necessarily a guarantee that a migrant was on camera at the time. Much of the area is mountainous, and terrain may block a camera\u2019s view. A separate MIT Technology Review<\/em> analysis concluded that of the deaths we tallied in the past four years, at least <\/strong>81 of those people were most likely within the field of view of a surveillance tower\u2014not blocked by a hill or other terrain.<\/p>\n Lillian Perlmutter is an investigative reporter covering immigration across California for <\/em>Times of San Diego and <\/em>NEWSWELL. Previously based in Mexico City, she has written for more than 25 outlets including the <\/em>L.A. Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and <\/em>The New Republic.
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A wilderness, heavily watched\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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A secretive hike north\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nCameras rise, questions remain\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nFinding Graciela\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nAbout Times of San Diego<\/strong><\/strong>\u2019s report<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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