Man Aims to Secure US-Mexico Border with a Drone Ramon Taylor - VOA News
go to original March 9, 2017

Man on Mission to Secure US/Mexico Border, with a Drone (VOA News)

Fifteen years ago, Glenn Spencer left behind his California life — and eventually his marriage — in pursuit of an obsession: “I came out to Arizona to help secure the border.”

On his Cochise County, Arizona ranch — roughly a football field’s distance from the rust metal barrier that separates the United States and Mexico — Spencer lays a drone flat on the dust and puts his seismograph-based detection system to test.

Within seconds, it disappears, humming quietly into an unforgiving sky. But Spencer never loses sight of his drone on a monitor. Underneath a mesh shade, he maneuvers a joystick like a young boy with his new toy.

It may seem like a game, but Spencer’s man-hunting mission carries dire consequences for those who have risked it all crossing the Sonoran Desert.

“The computer is looking at five miles of information, and then when something happens, the algorithm says, ‘Hey, there’s people out there,’” he explains, pointing to visual aids that he has set up in his warehouse for the curious. Once a migrant is detected, a sensor relays the coordinates, which Spencer promptly calls in.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol has not asked for Spencer’s help or that of any vigilante or private militia group, and the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the organization Spencer founded, American Border Patrol, a hate group. But he reports his findings anyway, hoping to shed light on the number of crossings that he says goes undetected, while fiercely denying allegations of racism as “demonizing” tactics on the part of “the opposition.”

Read the rest at VOA News

Related: Can a Border Wall with Mexico Made from Shipping Containers Be "Eco-Friendly and Sustainable"? (Treehugger)

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