The Great Wall of China. Hadrian’s Wall. The Berlin Wall. Throughout history, there have been calls to erect barriers, defining states by who is allowed in or kept out. “Build The Wall” became one of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogans, and helped him win the keys to the Oval Office – not once, but twice. And yet, while the construction of a physical barrier between Mexico and the United States draws so much attention, a far less conspicuous wall is being built virtually unchecked: a wall of surveillance.
These were the ideas covered at the Pulitzer Center talk on April 23rd at the Roosevelt House, where Sissel McCarthy was joined by journalist, author, and Pulitzer grantee Lauren Markham to discuss Markham’s research on the advancements in border control technology, their implications on human rights, and the government’s increased monitoring of American citizens.
The talk was a part of the Pulitzer Center reporting project “The Future of the Border.” At the event, Markham discussed her experience attending a border security expo, where private security companies sought to sell border control technology to the US government. She saw mechanical canines with remotely controlled guns, devices that detect human heartbeats inside trucks, and towers that track and collect data on objects and people alike.
Markham said the expo vendors routinely referred to the targets of these devices as “the adversary,” but at no point did they define who the adversary was. “Who is the adversary in this case?” Markham asked. “It’s someone trying to cross a border, often fleeing violence?” She added: “The fact that we have created an adversarial relationship with migration is part of the problem, and it has inflated the actual problem that we’re dealing with.”
A big, and under-discussed, part of that problem is that US citizens are increasingly being monitored as well. According to Markham, surveillance technology “is tested first in war zones and then at the border, and then it comes and creeps into society.” Indeed, as the number of surveillance towers along the southern border has grown to 564 as of May 1, 2025. Anyone living within range of these devices can be tracked and detected. And these towers are located not only in isolated deserts but also in urban and suburban areas, as photographer Colter Thomas captured in his collection ‘The Watchtowers: Visualizing Surveillance On The United States Border.’
Following the lecture, McCarthy joined Markham on stage in a Q&A to discuss the role of journalism in reporting on surveillance, and what can be done to combat the government’s infringement on privacy. “We need journalists tremendously,” Markham said. “This is how these stories get broken. This is how we understand how these systems work.” That said, Markham acknowledges that technology can play an important role in this new world. “I think technology is a tool, so there’s nothing evil about it,” she said. “It’s how you use it.” Journalists in particular, she added, can use technology to “make sense of this and expose how it’s being abused.”
