Border tower buildout carries $1 billion price tag
A federal surveillance expansion would bring more than 1,000 new towers to U.S. borders and push the network to 2,300 sites by 2034.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
3 min read
The Trump administration is set to spend about $1 billion on a sweeping expansion of border surveillance towers, according to reporting citing a recent Government Accountability Office assessment of Department of Homeland Security plans.
The plan would add more than 1,000 new autonomous towers along U.S. borders and upgrade technology on existing sites overseen by DHS. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the project is expected to run through 2034.
If completed, the network would grow to 2,300 surveillance towers nationwide, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The system currently includes about 830 towers.
A bigger electronic border watch
The spending is tied to Customs and Border Protection’s consolidated Integrated Surveillance Tower program, known as IST. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the program operates towers and other surveillance tools designed to spot “items of interest” along the border and in nearby communities.
The towers feed information into a central system that Border Patrol agents can access, according to the report. The network is part of a broader years-long push to add advanced technology to border enforcement.
CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott described the agency’s thinking during an April budget hearing with lawmakers, saying the barrier is more than physical infrastructure.
“It’s not just a barrier. A lot of people miss that [it] has technology built into it,” Scott said at the hearing, according to the report.
The White House has proposed millions of dollars in infrastructure for what has been described as a “smart” border wall, including autonomous and AI-powered surveillance towers that can alert agents to potential security threats, according to federal budget reporting cited in the account.
Money already moving
The surveillance push has already drawn substantial federal funding. More than $240 million was allocated for the IST program across 2025 and 2026, according to the report.
The 2027 budget directs another $97 million toward building 95 new towers over the next year, according to the same account. That would put the tower network on track for continued growth well before the 2034 target date.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that tracks border surveillance technology, has raised attention to the expansion and its price tag. Its reporting says the tower buildout would transform the scale of federal monitoring along the border, with new towers added on top of upgrades to equipment already in place.
The plan comes as DHS and CBP continue to frame border security as a mix of physical barriers, remote sensors, cameras and automated systems. Under the IST program, those tools are being tied together so agents can monitor detections from a shared platform, according to the report.
By the end of the rollout, the government’s border tower count would be nearly three times the current number reported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This story draws on original reporting from Mashable.