A Congresswoman Wants to Scrap the Billion-Dollar Border Towers

Days after MIT Technology Review published a major investigation into deaths along the border, a member of Congress is moving to shut down the surveillance tower program at the center of it.

Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, announced plans to introduce the Reimagining Safety Act, legislation that would terminate the network of surveillance towers — some of them autonomous, AI-enabled structures — along the US southern border.

The investigation that triggered it

The move follows MIT Technology Review's "Dying on Camera" investigation, which found that nearly one in four border deaths it analyzed between 2015 and early 2026 occurred within the towers' advertised range. The outlet also reported that the Department of Homeland Security does not track those deaths or other metrics on the towers' success or failure.

Ramirez cited the outlet's reporting that roughly 1,100 people have died within range of what she called a "billion-dollar surveillance tower system" between 2015 and 2026, adding: "The towers that we have paid a billion dollars to just don't work."

Beyond the towers

The bill is just one piece of a much bigger proposal. Ramirez wants to replace the Department of Homeland Security with a new Department of Community Safety, moving CISA, FEMA, TSA, and customs functions to other existing federal agencies. Her office has not yet released the legislation's text, saying it will come in the next few weeks. The push was developed with community groups and the advocacy organizations Just Futures Law and Mijente.

The broader context is explosive. The proposal lands amid growing public support for abolishing ICE, following high-profile enforcement operations in American cities and the killing of delivery driver Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, who was shot in the back by an ICE agent in Austin, Texas, last weekend, according to NBC News reporting cited by MIT Technology Review. At a Chicago press conference Wednesday, Ramirez said, "There's no question that DHS has to be dismantled. We need to provide them a road map in how we do it."

An uphill battle

The political odds are long. Previous bills to dismantle DHS have gone nowhere, and even some Democrats favor reforming rather than dismantling the agency, per Courthouse News reporting cited in the piece. Ramirez does have institutional leverage: she is the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee's cybersecurity subcommittee. The response from the top has been blunt. CBP offered no immediate comment, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, "Radical leftists are calling to defund the police and abolish DHS. It's NEVER going to happen."

Written by the BidAsk Newsroom. Based on reporting from the sources below.