Border Patrol’s Surveillance System Tracking Millions of U.S. Drivers

The Associated Press has reported that the U.S. Border Patrol is using a vast, largely hidden surveillance network to monitor millions of American drivers and flag “suspicious” travel patterns. The decade-old program, expanded significantly in the last five years, uses license plate readers, shared databases and predictive algorithms to alert agents about vehicles that match internal risk criteria.

According to the Associated Press’s investigation, cameras along highways in states as far from the border as Michigan and Indiana feed data into an algorithm that looks for unusual routes, quick turnarounds, or rental cars near border regions. 

Drivers are then stopped under minor pretexts such as “speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener,” the Associated Press reported, with no disclosure that Border Patrol intelligence triggered the encounter.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told AP that its license plate program is governed by “a stringent, multi-layered policy framework… to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”

“For national security reasons, we do not detail the specific operational applications,” the agency said.

Former officials shared that the program’s scope has been deliberately obscured, suggesting dropping charges rather than reveal the placement or use of covert cameras. Plate readers are often disguised in traffic safety equipment, sush as drums and barrels.

In Texas, a local officer pulled over trucking-company driver Lorenzo Gutierrez Lugo at Border Patrol’s request. Despite finding no contraband, police arrested him on suspicion of money laundering for carrying cash money with him. At the end, no charges were filed, and the attempted seizure of his vehicle and cash was dropped.

In another example, Houston resident Alek Schott was stopped, and his car searched after the Border Patrol flagged an overnight business trip as suspicious. “I didn’t know it was illegal to drive in Texas,” he told the Associated Press. 

The Associated Press obtained 70 pages of group chats where federal and local officers shared information on drivers’ movements, rental histories, and even social media details.

Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University, said courts are beginning to question whether “large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” aligns with Fourth Amendment protections. Nicole Ozer of UC Law San Francisco called the program “dragnet surveillance of Americans,” adding: “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”

Border Patrol’s access extends beyond its own cameras to systems run by the Drug Enforcement Administration and private vendors such as Rekor, Vigilant Solutions and Flock Safety. Through Flock alone, the agency at one point had visibility into at least 1,600 cameras across 22 states.

With more than $2.7 billion poised to flow into expanded surveillance technology, AP’s findings suggest that what began as a border-focused tool has evolved into a domestic intelligence apparatus capable of monitoring daily travel across the country, often without drivers ever knowing why they were stopped.