A key component of that effort, known as SBINet, was canceled after five years and more than $1 billion in expenditures. In the wake of that failure, CBP turned to Elbit, based in Haifa, Israel, awarding it a $145 million contract in 2014 to develop the integrated fixed towers in southern Arizona. In addition to fixed and mobile surveillance towers, other technology that CBP has acquired and deployed includes blimps outfitted with high-powered ground and air radar, sensors buried underground, and facial recognition software at ports of entry. CBP’s drone fleet has been described as the largest of any U.S. agency outside the Department of Defense.
The surveillance has had an acute impact on borderland communities, including on the Tohono O’odham reservation. Drones fly overhead, and motion sensors track foot traffic. CBP checkpoints monitor people traveling between the reservation and cities such as Tucson and Phoenix. Vehicle barriers, surveillance cameras, and trucks have appeared near burial grounds and on hilltops amid ancient saguaro forests, which are sacred to people on the reservation.
Nellie Jo David, a Tohono O’odham tribal member who is writing her dissertation on border security issues at the University of Arizona, says many younger people who have been forced by economic circumstances to work in nearby cities are returning home less and less, because they want to avoid the constant surveillance and harassment. “It’s especially taken a toll on our younger generations.”
