Migrants line up at the El Chaparral border crossing to enter the United States, in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. File photo. EFE/Joebeth Terríquez
Mexico City, Aug 1 (EFE) – The increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI), biometrics, and geolocation to immigration control has brought the border between Mexico and the United States into the digital realm, posing risks to human rights and privacy, warned Juan Carlos Barrón Pastor, director of the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
During the Second Permanent International Interdisciplinary Seminar on Community Social Emergencies, the academic pointed out that AI tools, biometric surveillance, facial recognition, and geolocation are part of the mechanisms used in the United States to monitor migrants.
The so-called Alternative to Detention Case Management System assigns algorithmic risk profiles, and he maintained that agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) use these types of technologies.
In his keynote address, “Democracy and Technologies: Ethics and Digital Governance,” he explained that asylum applications submitted through the CBP One app incorporate biometric data and information on the use of social media, which then become part of a digital record.
According to the researcher, these systems can reproduce biases and assume from the outset that a migrant represents a risk. Therefore, he considered it necessary to question the supposed objectivity of the algorithms, especially as applications are created to assess “how ‘dangerous’ a person is, assuming from the outset that simply being a migrant makes them dangerous.”
“The border is no longer just physical; it’s now also digital,” stated Barrón Pastor, who called for understanding the fear and loneliness that migrants face within monitored environments.
He also proposed strengthening digital security protocols based on human rights, privacy protection, and a humanistic perspective, as well as reducing the exposure of vulnerable communities and individuals.
He noted a legal lag in the face of the advancement of these technologies and therefore called for developing the capacity to understand how they work, leverage their benefits, and, at the same time, challenge automated decisions that may affect rights.
Barrón Pastor added that technology companies use data shared on networks for their own purposes and maintained that migrant communities and other vulnerable groups contribute information that feeds algorithmic systems.
“We need to build dynamics based on human dignity and personalized social contact, beyond standardized narratives,” he concluded.
