AI Endgame: US Border Patrol using AI algorithms for “suspicious” travel patterns and mass surveillance

Newsletter #60

Mar 14, 2026

March 13, 2026

By Debbie Coffey, AI Endgame

When I lived in a small town in California, one of my favorite pastimes was driving in the hilly countryside, where I’d pass huge oak trees, fruit stands, and ranches. I’d often pull to the side of the road so I could take time to enjoy the view.

I felt free.

I’m sure most of us love the freedom we’ve had in this country to drive anywhere we want on a public road. However, if we’re thinking about taking a road trip these days, we now have to worry about traveling on certain highways or meandering off the main roads to sightsee.

An innocent drive anywhere in America can easily turn into a nightmare.

The US Border Patrol

To put this into context, the US Border Patrol (BP) is a component of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Both the BP and CBP are agencies of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The Border Patrol’s primary mission is to detect and prevent the illegal entry of individuals into the United States. BP patrols about 6,000 miles of our borders with Mexico and Canada, and 2,000 miles of the coast along the Florida and Puerto Rico. [1]

The Border Patrol has veered far off course

An important AP news article, written by investigative journalists Garance Burke and Byron Tau, “Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns,” describes the Border Patrol’s network of cameras, some hidden in roadside traffic equipment, that scan and record vehicle license plates.

Customs and Border Protection can track vehicles anywhere in the country. CBP has contracts with Vigilant Solutions (now Motorola Solutions), Flock Safety, and data-sharing agreements with other agencies.

Flock Safety operates more than 80,000 cameras used by over 5,000 police departments. ICE has access to this network without formal contracts and shares the data with CBP. [2]

What does Border Patrol consider suspicious?

An AI algorithm flags vehicles as being “suspicious” based on factors that include where they came from, where they were going, and which route they took.

The Border Patrol could consider you to be suspicious for “driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region.”

The Border Patrol works with local law enforcement.

What may seem like a routine stop for speeding, failing to signal, tinted windows, or even a dangling air freshener is actually a pretext for officers to pull over drivers for questioning. Officers aggressively press drivers about “their travels, their belongings, their jobs, how they know the passengers in the car,” and more.

The drivers have no idea the real reason they were pulled over was because of the roads they drove on.

BP’s surveillance network of cameras extends far into the interior of the US

The cameras have captured people driving from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. AP found camera locations in Detroit, and one near the Michigan-Indiana border, capturing traffic going to Chicago or Gary, Indiana.

Mass surveillance

“This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation.”

“They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities.” - Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco

“Today, the deserts, forests and mountains of the nation’s land borders are dotted with checkpoints and increasingly, surveillance towers, Predator drones, thermal cameras and license plate readers, both covert and overt.” [3]

This is shocking and extremely concerning. Our tax dollars, used to fund the Department of Homeland Security, are actually being used for the demise of our freedom.

BP’s surveillance, combined with ICE and CBP’s unconstitutional use of Mobile Fortify, should be on everyone’s radar.

As detailed in an AI Endgame newsletter, “Mobile Fortify is a new biometric mobile phone app, that basically turns a government-issued cell phone into a “biometric capture device.” [4]

“ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data/photograph collection.” [5]

We also can’t opt out of having our vehicles tracked.

Is the large-scale, continual surveillance of everyone, everywhere, unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches?

With few limits on how this data is gathered, stored, or shared, we’re careening towards a national surveillance state. Our rights and freedoms are already profoundly eroded.

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