On a cracked two-lane street on the japanese fringe of San Diego County, James Cordero eased his Jeep onto the shoulder after one thing caught his eye. It regarded like an deserted trailer. Inside he discovered a hidden digital camera feeding an enormous surveillance community that logs the license plate of each driver passing by this stretch of distant backcountry between San Diego and the Arizona state line.
Cordero, 44, has discovered dozens of those cameras hidden in trailers and building barrels on border roads round San Diego and Imperial counties: one on Previous Freeway 80 close to Jacumba Scorching Springs; one other exterior the Golden Acorn On line casino in Campo; one other alongside Interstate 8 towards In-Ko-Pah Gorge.
They began exhibiting up after California granted permits to the Border Patrol and different federal companies to put license plate readers on state highways within the final months of the Biden administration. Now as many as 40 are feeding info into Trump administration databases because the Democratic-led state chafes over the federal authorities’s large deportation program.
The cameras are elevating issues with privateness specialists, civil liberties advocates and humanitarian support employees who say California shouldn’t be supporting the surveillance and data-collection program, which they view as an unwarranted authorities intrusion into the lives of People who’ve dedicated no crime. Furthermore, they are saying this system conflicts with state regulation.
Supporters say the gadgets permit regulation enforcement to rapidly establish and find individuals they think of significant crimes. Additionally they argue the cameras assist companies spot patterns in drug and human trafficking, and could possibly be used to assist find lacking individuals, reminiscent of youngsters or different susceptible individuals.
“When you’re not doing something unlawful, why fear about it?” stated longtime Jacumba resident Allen Stanks, 70.
“Everyone seems to be speaking about privateness, OK. Cease placing every thing on Fb. ‘Right here’s an image of my meals.’ Who cares?” stated Stanks.
Some locals, nonetheless, suspect the cameras are behind some uncommon encounters they’ve had in latest months with officers from Border Patrol and its dad or mum company, Customs and Border Safety. In a single case brokers questioned a grandmother — a lawful everlasting resident — about why she went to a on line casino, in line with her grandson.
James Cordero, a volunteer with the nonprofit Border Angels, locations water bottles in a distant space close to the tip of the fence on the US-Mexico border on Dec. 29, 2018.
(Apu Gomes / AFP through Getty Pictures)
Cordero has a special concern. On his days off, he leads volunteers into the far reaches of the county, leaving water, meals and clothes for migrants. He fears his colleagues could possibly be detained by brokers.
“I’m not a lot apprehensive about myself, however I’m apprehensive about numerous our volunteers that come out,” stated Cordero. “I don’t need them to need to take care of any of the nonsense of being tracked or being pulled over and questioned.”
He has good purpose to be nervous. Through the first Trump administration, federal officers prosecuted volunteers from the humanitarian group No Extra Deaths for leaving water and provides for migrants within the Arizona desert. The volunteers confronted fees, together with “abandonment of property” and felony harboring, although the convictions for some have been later overturned.
Border Patrol gives little details about its use of license plate readers on its web site. In 2020, the Division of Homeland Safety issued a report that describes the expertise generally, however doesn’t specify the place it’s getting used. CalMatters reached out to Border Patrol and Homeland Safety officers for remark, however didn’t obtain a response.
“There’s no transparency, that’s the worst half,” Cordero stated.
The Homeland Safety report says some readers are capturing license plate numbers, in addition to the make and mannequin of the automobile, the state the automobile is registered in, the digital camera proprietor and kind, the GPS coordinates for the place the picture was taken, and the date and time of the seize.
The “expertise may additionally seize (inside the picture) the setting surrounding a automobile, which can embrace drivers and passengers,” the report states. It additionally says feds can entry license plate readers operated by business distributors.
Mapping hidden cameras
Earlier this month, the Digital Frontier Basis and a coalition of 30 organizations despatched a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Division of Transportation urging them to revoke state permits and take away the covert readers operated by federal companies like Customs and Border Safety and the Drug Enforcement Company alongside California border highways.
The San Francisco-based privateness and civil rights advocacy group, also called EFF, mapped out greater than 40 hidden license plate readers in Southern California, most of them alongside border roadways. It contends the gadgets bypass a 2016 state regulation that spells out how regulation enforcement companies can use automated license plate readers, that are sometimes called ALPRs.
“By permitting Border Patrol and the DEA to place license plate readers alongside the border, they’re primarily bypassing the protections underneath [California law],” stated Dave Maass, the director of investigations for EFF. “That could be a backdoor round it.”
Maass stated he believes Cordero’s issues in regards to the company surveilling humanitarian volunteers could also be legitimate.
“They declare they could be in search of smugglers or they could be in search of cartel members, however that’s not who they’re accumulating knowledge on,” stated Maass. “[The program] is primarily accumulating knowledge on individuals who stay within the area.
Maass stated there’s no means to make certain which company is putting in every digital camera, however his group checked with all different companies working within the space, such because the San Diego and Imperial sheriff’s departments, the California Freeway Patrol, and Cal Hearth, amongst others.
The digital camera fashions at the moment put in on state highways within the border area are the identical as ones the Border Patrol bought in massive quantities, in line with Maass. Data obtained from Caltrans by EFF from 2016 seem to point out Drug and Enforcement Administration and Border Patrol requesting permits to put in the identical gadgets in different elements of San Diego County, in line with Maass.
Customs and Border Safety didn’t reply to a request for remark. The governor’s workplace didn’t remark. The Drug Enforcement Company additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Caltrans approves ALPR requests
By day, Cordero works in water-damage restoration, the crews residents name after floods and burst pipes, making him snug with emergencies.
“Persons are actually dying out right here,” Cordero says of his volunteer work, performed by the nonprofit Al Otro Lado, a authorized providers group that additionally gives humanitarian help to refugees, migrants and deportees on each side of the U.S.-Mexico border. “All we’re making an attempt to do is stop individuals from dying.”
In response to questions from CalMatters, a spokesperson for Caltrans supplied a written assertion that the state company has permitted eight permits for license plate readers from federal companies, like Customs and Border Safety and the Drug Enforcement Administration, to be stationed in state freeway rights-of-way.
“Caltrans doesn’t function, handle, or decide the particular use of expertise or gear put in by allow holders, nor does it have entry to any of the collected knowledge,” the assertion learn partly.
Caltrans stated federal immigration companies haven’t requested permits for the cameras since June 2024. They didn’t say how lengthy a allow lasts. Between 2015 and 2024, their information point out Customs and Border Safety and the Drug Enforcement Administration requested 14 allow purposes for “regulation enforcement surveillance gadgets.” Of the 14, eight have been permitted, 4 have been canceled by the candidates and two didn’t end in tasks in state right-of-way, the company stated.
In California, license plates are tracked not solely by the federal authorities and regulation enforcement, but additionally by colleges and companies, together with some House Depots and malls. Whereas colleges and companies could not conform to go that info on to the federal authorities, native police with entry to these cameras could achieve this.
California regulation prevents state and native companies from sharing license plate knowledge with out-of-state entities, together with federal companies concerned in immigration enforcement. A CalMatters investigation in June 2025 revealed that southern California regulation enforcement companies, together with sheriff’s departments in San Diego and Orange counties, have shared automated license plate reader knowledge with federal companies in violation of state regulation.
Newsom vetoed a invoice to strengthen California license plate reader regulation final fall. Two days later, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit in opposition to town of El Cajon for a number of violations of the license plate sharing prohibition. Since 2024, the lawyer normal’s workplace has despatched letters to 18 regulation enforcement companies, together with the Imperial County Sheriff’s Workplace, the San Diego Police Division and the El Centro Police Division.
Native companies proceed to share license plate knowledge with federal immigration authorities, and never simply alongside the border. The San Pablo Police Division in Northern California, one of many regulation enforcement companies that acquired letters from the lawyer normal’s workplace, shared license plate knowledge with the Border Patrol as just lately as final month, in line with information obtained by Oakland Privateness‘s head of analysis Mike Katz-Lacabe. Some cameras are simple to identify, however Katz-Lacabe stated that native police have hid cameras that scan license plates for greater than a decade, generally behind the grill of police cruisers or inside velocity restrict trailers or in a faux saguaro cactus.
“This has been the follow for years,” he stated.
On a latest Saturday, Cordero was dressed for the distant border terrain — flannel, mountaineering boots, a San Diego Padres cap pulled low in opposition to the solar. On this explicit weekend, provides at one of many drop websites had already been used, indicating individuals could also be crossing within the space.
Cordero has gotten good at discovering stuff out right here. Within the distant Ocotillo washes, the place the scrubs claw at individuals’s shins, he just lately discovered what he believes to be the stays of a human finger.
A yr earlier, Cordero discovered a telephone contact checklist subsequent to human stays. He and his spouse, Jacqueline Arellano, have been in a position to make use of the telephone checklist to inform the individual’s household in Arizona about the place their lacking liked one fell.
That’s why when, months in the past, he first noticed the deserted trailer alongside the aspect of the street on Previous Freeway 80, he needed to cease to take a better look.
“It took me passing by a couple of instances earlier than I spotted what it was,” stated Cordero.
Pulling over grandma
An Related Press investigation revealed in November revealed that Border Patrol had hidden license plate readers in abnormal site visitors security gear. The info collected by the company’s plate readers was fed right into a predictive intelligence program monitoring hundreds of thousands of American drivers nationwide to establish and detain individuals whose journey patterns the algorithm deemed suspicious, in line with the AP’s investigation.
Sergio Ojeda, a group organizer with the mutual support group Imperial Valley Fairness and Justice, stated Customs and Border Safety apparently believed his grandmother’s driving patterns have been suspicious as a result of they interrogated her in regards to the period of time she spends at native casinos within the space.
“She was outraged about it,” stated Ojeda. His grandmother, a resident of Imperial Valley with authorized standing, was crossing the border when brokers requested her about her journeys to casinos.
“She requested them again, ‘Is one thing mistaken with that? Am I not speculated to be doing that or why are you questioning me about this?’ they usually have been like ‘Oh, no, it simply appears suspicious,’” Ojeda recounted.
Ojeda stated he was equally involved, and he doesn’t benefit from the feeling of being watched simply because he lives close to the border. “It’s how I really feel day-after-day,” he stated. “Driving round, I joke with my co-workers: ‘Which chapter of 1984 is that this?’”
Wendy Fry and Khari Johnson write for CalMatters
