US-Mexico Border Upgrades Its Defense System By Having Surveillance Towers

The authorities improved its security to the latest cameras developed by a virtual reality wunderkind in monitoring the southern border. They just built an invisible border wall due to the continued surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Solar energy powers the high-tech watch poles, known as the Autonomous Surveillance Towers or ASTs. The "invisible border" is run by artificial intelligence to detect movement within a two-mile radius. The information obtained by the ASTs would be relayed to agents monitoring the region in real-time.

The high-tech watch poles are now being put at various locations along the almost 2,000-mile border of the United States and Mexico.

Border Patrol agent Joel Freeland told the New York Post that the Autonomous Surveillance Towers were put in distant areas that would be difficult to reach. The ASTs would be operational 24 hours a day, according to Freeland. Still, the agent claimed that the new technology was ecologically benign due to its reliance on solar power.

Palmer Luckey, the 28-year-old founder and designer of Oculus VR and Oculus Rift, created the ASTs.

The ASTs were initially tested in the San Diego Sector of the border in 2018. They were recently installed in the El Paso Sector, one of the busiest crossing places for migrants along the border.

The El Paso Sector has detained a total of 54,396 people in fiscal year 2020. However, only days before the fiscal year 2021 ended, the figures had nearly tripled. According to the most recent statistics obtained by Fox News, there were 155,892 people held before the conclusion of the fiscal year on September 30.

Furthermore, Freeland told the New York Post that the El Paso Sector's newest AST was responsible for most of their recent arrests. According to Freeland, the tower is located on a high lonely stretch of scrub where the borders of Texas, New Mexico, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua converge. The cutting-edge cameras have only been operational for two weeks.

Officials refused to say how many apprehensions were tied to the ASTs.

"The ASTs scan the environment with radar to detect movement, orients a camera to the location of the movement detected by the radar, and analyzes the imagery using algorithms to autonomously identify items of interest, such as people or vehicles," U.S. Customs and Border Patrol's statement read.

The CBP stated that 140 cameras would be deployed to form a virtual wall along the border.

Luckey, who is a fan of former President Donald Trump, also put the towers on the market through Anduril Industries, a defense technology company he formed in 2017.