She died at the San Diego border. A surveillance camera was in plain sight
She died at the San Diego border. A surveillance camera was in plain sight
她死在圣地亚哥边境，而监控摄像头就在眼前
Dying on Camera. She had only walked for a couple of hours, and already she was lost. It was early afternoon on Sept. 14, 2025, when 30-year-old Graciela Gómez Hernández crossed the border from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California, sending voice messages to her mother and sister as she walked. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego. Journalists in both newsrooms spent the past year examining the failures of border surveillance technology and uncovering the stories of the people who die in the borderlands.
“镜头下的死亡”。她才走了几个小时，就已经迷路了。2025年9月14日下午，30岁的格拉谢拉·戈麦斯·埃尔南德斯（Graciela Gómez Hernández）从蒂华纳东部边缘越过边境进入南加州，她在行走时给母亲和姐姐发送了语音信息。这篇报道是《麻省理工科技评论》与《圣地亚哥时报》合作项目“镜头下的死亡”（Dying on Camera）的一部分。两家新闻编辑部的记者在过去一年里调查了边境监控技术的失灵，并揭开了那些死在边境地区的人们的故事。
Gómez Hernández did not tell her family about her plan until the day before. Once she arrived in California, she hoped to work and send money back to her three children and her parents in southern Mexico. Her oldest son, age 11, had asked for a bicycle. She either climbed a ladder over the border wall or slipped through a section in steep terrain where fencing has yet to be built. Dozens of game trails cut through the dust on hillsides of sagebrush and manzanita. It was the first segment of a hike through the Otay Mountain Wilderness. The eastern edge of San Diego is just a mile away, but countless migrants hike 10 or 20 miles north through the mountains to evade the Border Patrol, emerging in smaller towns and on distant highways with fewer checkpoints.
戈麦斯·埃尔南德斯直到出发前一天才告诉家人她的计划。她希望抵达加州后能打工赚钱，寄回给墨西哥南部的父母和三个孩子。她11岁的大儿子曾想要一辆自行车。她要么是爬梯子翻过了边境墙，要么是从地形陡峭、尚未修建围栏的地段穿过。山坡上布满了鼠尾草和曼萨尼塔灌木，尘土中交错着几十条兽径。这是她穿越奥泰山荒野（Otay Mountain Wilderness）徒步旅程的第一段。圣地亚哥东部边缘距离这里仅一英里，但无数移民为了躲避边境巡逻队，不得不向北在山中徒步10到20英里，最终出现在检查站较少的城镇和偏远公路上。
Between 2 and 3 p.m., her sister said, Gómez Hernández sent a final message to her mother. “I can’t do it anymore,” she whispered into her phone. By the time a forensic crew came to collect her, two weeks later, most of her body had disappeared into the earth. She died on her own, but she was not, strictly speaking, alone. She was in one of the most heavily surveilled strips of land in the world. Before she died, Gómez Hernández told her family in a WhatsApp message that she could see helicopters overhead and white Border Patrol trucks making periodic laps on the road below. And even if none of those agents saw her or knew she was in distress, something else had a clear view.
据她姐姐说，在下午2点到3点之间，戈麦斯·埃尔南德斯给母亲发了最后一条信息。“我实在走不动了，”她对着手机低声说道。两周后，当法医小组来收殓她时，她的遗体大部分已经没入土中。她独自死去，但严格来说，她并不孤单。她身处世界上监控最严密的土地之一。在去世前，戈麦斯·埃尔南德斯在WhatsApp信息中告诉家人，她能看到头顶的直升机，以及下方道路上定期巡逻的白色边境巡逻车。即便那些特工没有看到她，也不知道她正处于困境，但还有别的东西将一切尽收眼底。
Supervising the whole territory, from a nearby hilltop, was a slender gray surveillance tower. That tower, made by General Dynamics and in place since 2019, boasts two sets of electro-optical and infrared cameras with long-range lenses that can track targets 5 to 7 miles away. Gómez Hernández was just one mile away. Surveillance towers have proliferated in recent years, as contractors added newer camera systems that use artificial intelligence to distinguish border-crossers from other people and animals, and track their movements, at an overall cost of more than a billion dollars. Yet as the cameras scan the terrain, migrants continue to die in plain sight.
在附近的山顶上，一座细长的灰色监控塔俯瞰着整个区域。这座由通用动力公司（General Dynamics）制造、自2019年起投入使用的塔楼，配备了两套光电和红外摄像机，其长焦镜头可以追踪5到7英里外的目标。而戈麦斯·埃尔南德斯当时距离它仅一英里。近年来，监控塔的数量激增，承包商增加了使用人工智能的新型摄像系统，旨在将越境者与其他人及动物区分开来并追踪其行踪，总耗资超过十亿美元。然而，尽管摄像头扫描着这片土地，移民们依然在众目睽睽之下死去。
Thousands of migrants have died while crossing the border in the past two decades, many of them near to Border Patrol surveillance installations. But the phenomenon is especially pronounced in the Otay Mountain Wilderness, just outside San Diego. A Times of San Diego analysis counted hundreds of cases along the California border—including at least 138 in the past four years—where migrants’ remains were found within the range of the very cameras designed to help track and intercept them. A topographical analysis conducted as part of an MIT Technology Review investigation estimated that more than half of these remains were found in a spot where a camera would have a clear view of a person, without terrain blocking the line of sight.
在过去二十年里，成千上万的移民在越境时死亡，其中许多人死在边境巡逻队的监控设施附近。这种现象在圣地亚哥郊外的奥泰山荒野尤为突出。《圣地亚哥时报》的一项分析统计了加州边境沿线的数百起案例——包括过去四年中的至少138起——发现移民遗体的位置都在那些旨在追踪和拦截他们的摄像头覆盖范围内。作为《麻省理工科技评论》调查的一部分，一项地形分析估计，超过一半的遗体被发现于摄像头视野清晰、且没有地形遮挡视线的地方。
Some of these migrants died swiftly, falling from the border wall or drowning in a canal or river. But dozens of them suffered slow deaths of exposure in the wilderness, deaths that might have been averted with emergency aid. People who died in Southern California came from just across the border, or from as far away as Africa. They were as old as 70 and as young as 5. They died in the heat or the cold. But they all died within range of a surveillance camera.
这些移民中，有些人死得很快，比如从边境墙上坠落，或在运河、河流中溺亡。但还有数十人是在荒野中因暴露而缓慢死亡，如果能得到紧急援助，这些死亡本可以避免。死在南加州的人有的来自边境对面，有的远道而来，甚至来自非洲。他们有的年逾七旬，有的年仅五岁。他们死于酷暑或严寒，但他们都死在了监控摄像头的范围内。
More than 120 surveillance towers stand along the California border, according to documents and live observations collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The towers are not the only form of surveillance in the region. The border is blanketed by an interconnected network of trail cameras, underground movement detectors, radar, infrared sensors, drones, and even blimps. In March 2025, the Trump administration directed the Department of Defense to use satellites to watch the border as well. Even when mountains or vegetation block a tower’s view, other devices may pick up the trail. Local advocates say surveillance technology in the Otay Mountain Wilderness is almost unavoidable.
根据电子前沿基金会（Electronic Frontier Foundation）收集的文件和实地观察，加州边境沿线矗立着120多座监控塔。这些塔并不是该地区唯一的监控手段。边境地区覆盖着由越野摄像头、地下移动探测器、雷达、红外传感器、无人机甚至飞艇组成的互联网络。2025年3月，特朗普政府指示国防部利用卫星监视边境。即使山脉或植被阻挡了监控塔的视野，其他设备也可能捕捉到踪迹。当地倡导者表示，在奥泰山荒野，监控技术几乎无处不在。