Border Patrol quietly monitoring U.S. drivers for ones it thinks have suspicious travel patterns, AP says

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.

The Border Patrol's predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over - often for reasons cited such as speeding, no turn signals or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement's radar.

The AP's investigation, the first to reveal details of the program on America's roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.

The Border Patrol's parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are "governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, 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. While the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 miles of the border, it is legally allowed "to operate anywhere in the United States," the agency added.

Once limited to policing the nation's boundaries, the Border Patrol's surveillance system stretches into the country's interior and monitors ordinary Americans' daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.

Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, according to two people familiar with the program. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.

A license plate reader used by U.S. Border Patrol is hidden in a traffic cone while capturing passing vehicles on AZ Highway 85 on Oct. 21, 2025, in Gila Bend, Ariz.

The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers' behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency's network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.

The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked the Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.

This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration's heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

While collecting license plates from cars on public roads has generally been upheld by courts, some legal scholars see the growth of large digital surveillance networks such as the Border Patrol's as raising constitutional questions.

Courts have started to recognize that "large-scale surveillance technology that's capturing everyone and everywhere at every time" might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University.

Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, expressed alarm when told of AP's findings.

"They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know," she said. "These surveillance systems do not make communities safer."

Well, Well: US Govt Linking [Unknown Provider] Tracking Software to License Plate Readers and Facial Recognition

November 20, 2025 | Sundance

The Associated Press is shocked, shocked, to discover that Customs and Border Protection has expanded their surveillance network beyond the “100 miles inland from every border” as authorized in the Patriot Act.

Worse yet is their stunned research showing license plate readers (APLR’s) are being connected to various other public and private sector mechanisms to identify travel patterns of U.S. citizens and collate them to facial recognition software applications.

Both the AP and CBS begin reporting on this domestic surveillance system as something quite new, it’s not. We have previously outlined the construct as it was assembled HERE and HERE and HERE.

This is the part of the performance where past and present DC officials, including many that you personally support (Nunes), say the risk is now too great to worry about the 4th Amendment. With borders unsecured by Obama and Biden, there is now no way to mitigate the risk from criminal aliens against the concern with privacy and the 4th Amendment.

In the bigger picture, this is why DC justifies extending FISA-702 reauthorization now. The argument says, ‘If we do not support and create the surveillance state, we cannot capture and remove all the criminal aliens.’

WASHINGTON DC – The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The Border Patrol’s predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested.
[…] The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked the Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.
This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. (read more)

The entire article is actually good; it’s just frustrating and annoying to see media pretending they didn’t know about this stuff until Trump.

CTH has been writing about this surveillance issue for well over a decade. The introduction of Palantir facial recognition, to the overall database of social media information and private identity information, now makes it very easy for the government to simply point a camera at your face and get every scintilla of information about us.

Almost all of the privacy advocates have given up trying to resist the outcome. However, I am not one of them. All it will take is a small mistake in the AI development programming, and people will see quickly just how dangerous this is.

It’s all gone to far.

All of it.

The left wants to shove a giant LGBTQIA dildo up your rear while you get mandated vaccines, forced to attend diversity training, get told you have to hire a marginally qualified black female and pay 50% taxes so they can buy more votes with some “free* hand out program for illegals or what else.

The left has their make belief science of climate change, make belief vaccine science, make belief gay genes which all just back up their idiology.

—All in the name of social justice, equality, saving the planet...

The right wants to shove a GPS tracker up your rear, take naked pictures of you at the airport, have Middle East like road blocks, throw people in prison without trial, be able to do missile strikes on US citizens abroad without a trial, be able to listen to every phone call, read every text and email without a warrant...

The right allows their make belief science of the dangers of marjuana, or their science in the dangers or pornography to support their idiology.

—All in the name of national security and to save the children.

Both sides IMHO are equally bad.

I just want to be left alone and be free.

What ever happened to ideas like “freedom and liberty,” privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, property rights, freedom of religion, my right to defend myself, control over my own body???

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