Texas authorities have long leveraged technology to surveil people across the state and particularly in the borderlands. For years, the state has worked to automate border enforcement using wildlife cameras that detect migrants on ranchlands, deploying heat-detecting drones, and more recently, investing millions of dollars in AI-powered technology that can track cell phones without a warrant.
Under Governor Greg Abbott's multi-billion-dollar border security bonanza, Operation Lone Star, the international boundary of the Rio Grande no longer holds back law enforcement efforts. The digital border reaches across Texas and beyond.
