In this report, we examine what a “smart” border is, especially the version bristling with surveillance and detection technologies currently championed by the Biden administration. Even as the events in Chula Vista spurred border residents, like Paúl, to join forces against invasive license plate reader technology in their community, border technologies are being presented nationally as harmless and humane, especially in comparison to the foreboding physical barrier that dominated the news during the Donald Trump years. The border will be “managed,” in the language of the Biden administration, and it will be as modern and cool as the smartphone in your pocket.
Former representative Nina Lowey (D-NY) expressed this technophilic framing perfectly in July 2020 after the House Appropriations Committee released its 2021 fiscal year draft. The budget, she
said, provided “strong investments in modern, effective technologies” for border security while prohibiting funding for “President Trump’s racist border wall boondoggle.” In a way, this is the Democratic version of “
border theater,” a smoke-and-mirrors routine that presents “smart” technology as an alternative to the border wall, rather than as an integral part, extension, and perpetuation of it.
The border wall is more than just a physical barrier; it is also a system of video surveillance systems, unmanned aerial systems (or drones), and license plate readers, like the ones used in Chula Vista, which are part of a broadening biometric collection strategy. Biometric collection has grown “big time” for CBP since 9/11, said Patrick Nemeth, the Department of Homeland Security’s director of identity operations, at the 2017 Border Security Expo, the industry trade show for new border technologies, held in in San Antonio, Texas. Nemeth said that CBP’s fingerprint data increased from 10 million to 212 million since 9/11. He boasted that DHS now had the second-largest biometric system in the world, “right behind India’s.” Since then, the number of “unique identity records” collected by the agency has increased to 260 million. And this will only keep growing as CBP
upgrades its biometric system to Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology, which not only has facial, iris, and digital fingerprint capability, but will also be able to get a person’s DNA (which is already
happening) and track an individual’s “relationship patterns.”