He noticed an deserted trailer. Then, he uncovered a surveillance community on California’s border

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 appeared 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 means of 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 Old Highway 80 close to Jacumba Hot Springs; one other outdoors the Golden Acorn Casino in Campo; one other alongside Interstate 8 towards In-Ko-Pah Gorge.

They began displaying 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 data into Trump administration databases because the Democratic-led state chafes over the federal authorities’s massive deportation program.

The cameras are elevating considerations with privateness consultants, civil liberties advocates and humanitarian assist staff 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 Americans who’ve dedicated no crime. Moreover, they are saying this system conflicts with state legislation.

Supporters say the gadgets permit legislation enforcement to shortly determine and find individuals they think of great crimes. They additionally argue the cameras assist companies spot patterns in drug and human trafficking, and may very well be used to assist find lacking individuals, akin to kids or different weak individuals.

“If you’re not doing anything illegal, why worry about it?” mentioned longtime Jacumba resident Allen Stanks, 70.

“Everyone is talking about privacy, OK. Stop putting everything on Facebook. ‘Here’s a picture of my food.’ Who cares?” mentioned Stanks.

Some locals, nevertheless, 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 Protection. In one case brokers questioned a grandmother — a lawful everlasting resident — about why she went to a on line casino, in accordance with her grandson.

Cordero has a unique 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 may very well be detained by brokers.

“I’m not so much worried about myself, but I’m worried about a lot of our volunteers that come out,” mentioned Cordero. “I don’t want them to have to deal with any of the nonsense of being tracked or being pulled over and questioned.”

He has good purpose to be nervous. During the primary Trump administration, federal officers prosecuted volunteers from the humanitarian group No More 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 had been later overturned.

Border Patrol gives little details about its use of license plate readers on its web site. In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report that describes the expertise generally, however doesn’t specify the place it’s getting used. CalIssues reached out to Border Patrol and Homeland Security officers for remark, however didn’t obtain a response.

“There’s no transparency, that’s the worst part,” Cordero mentioned.

The Homeland Security 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 “technology may also capture (within the image) the environment surrounding a vehicle, which may include 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 Electronic Frontier Foundation and a coalition of 30 organizations sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Transportation urging them to revoke state permits and take away the covert readers operated by federal companies like Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Agency alongside California border highways.

The San Francisco-based privateness and civil rights advocacy group, also called EFF, mapped out more than 40 hidden license plate readers in Southern California, most of them alongside border roadways. It contends the gadgets bypass a 2016 state law that spells out how legislation enforcement companies can use automated license plate readers, that are sometimes called ALPRs.

“By allowing Border Patrol and the DEA to put license plate readers along the border, they’re essentially bypassing the protections under [California law],” mentioned Dave Maass, the director of investigations for EFF. “That is a backdoor around it.”

Maass mentioned he believes Cordero’s considerations in regards to the company surveilling humanitarian volunteers could also be legitimate.

“They claim they might be looking for smugglers or they might be looking for cartel members, but that’s not who they’re collecting data on,” mentioned Maass. “[The program] is primarily collecting data on people who live in the region.

Maass said there’s no way to be certain which agency is installing each camera, but his organization checked with all other agencies operating in the area, such as the San Diego and Imperial sheriff’s departments, the California Highway Patrol, and Cal Fire, among others.

The camera models currently installed on state highways in the border region are the same as ones the Border Patrol purchased in large amounts, according to Maass. Records obtained from Caltrans by EFF from 2016 appear to show Drug and Enforcement Administration and Border Patrol requesting permits to install the same devices in other parts of San Diego County, according to Maass.

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment. The governor’s office did not comment. The Drug Enforcement Agency also did not respond to a request for comment.

Caltrans approves ALPR requests

By day, Cordero works in water-damage restoration, the crews residents call after floods and burst pipes, making him comfortable with emergencies.

“People are literally dying out here,” Cordero says of his volunteer work, achieved by means of 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 trying to do is prevent people from dying.”

In response to questions from CalIssues, a spokesperson for Caltrans offered a written assertion that the state company has authorised eight permits for license plate readers from federal companies, like Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration, to be stationed in state freeway rights-of-way.

“Caltrans does not operate, manage, or determine the specific use of technology or equipment installed by permit holders, nor does it have access to any of the collected data,” the assertion learn partly.

Caltrans mentioned 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 data point out Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration requested 14 allow functions for “law enforcement surveillance devices.” Of the 14, eight had been authorised, 4 had been canceled by the candidates and two didn’t lead to tasks in state right-of-way, the company mentioned.

In California, license plates are tracked not solely by the federal authorities and legislation enforcement, but in addition by faculties and companies, together with some Home Depots and malls. While schools and companies might not comply with cross that data on to the federal authorities, native police with entry to these cameras might achieve this.

California legislation prevents state and local agencies from sharing license plate knowledge with out-of-state entities, together with federal companies concerned in immigration enforcement. A CalIssues investigation in June 2025 revealed that southern California legislation enforcement companies, together with sheriff’s departments in San Diego and Orange counties, have shared automated license plate reader data with federal agencies in violation of state legislation.

Newsom vetoed a bill to strengthen California license plate reader law final fall. Two days later, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit towards the town of El Cajon for a number of violations of the license plate sharing prohibition. Since 2024, the lawyer basic’s workplace has despatched letters to 18 legislation enforcement companies, together with the Imperial County Sheriff’s Office, the San Diego Police Department and the El Centro Police Department.

Local companies proceed to share license plate knowledge with federal immigration authorities, and never simply alongside the border. The San Pablo Police Department in Northern California, one of many legislation enforcement companies that acquired letters from the lawyer basic’s workplace, shared license plate knowledge with the Border Patrol as just lately as final month, in accordance with data obtained by Oakland Privacy‘s head of research Mike Katz-Lacabe. Some cameras are easy to spot, but Katz-Lacabe said that local police have concealed cameras that scan license plates for more than a decade, sometimes behind the grill of police cruisers or inside speed limit trailers or in a fake saguaro cactus.

“This has been the practice for years,” he said.

On a recent Saturday, Cordero was dressed for the remote border terrain — flannel, hiking boots, a San Diego Padres cap pulled low against the sun. On this particular weekend, supplies at one of the drop sites had already been used, indicating people may be crossing in the area.

Cordero has gotten good at finding stuff out here. In the remote Ocotillo washes, where the scrubs claw at people’s shins, he just lately discovered what he believes to be the stays of a human finger.

A 12 months earlier, Cordero discovered a cellphone contact listing subsequent to human stays. He and his spouse, Jacqueline Arellano, had been ready to make use of the cellphone listing 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 facet of the street on Old Highway 80, he needed to cease to take a more in-depth look.

“It took me passing by a few times before I realized what it was,” mentioned Cordero.

Pulling over grandma

An Associated Press investigation published in November revealed that Border Patrol had hidden license plate readers in unusual site visitors security tools. The knowledge collected by the company’s plate readers was fed right into a predictive intelligence program monitoring tens of millions of American drivers nationwide to determine and detain individuals whose journey patterns the algorithm deemed suspicious, in accordance with the AP’s investigation.

Sergio Ojeda, a group organizer with the mutual assist group Imperial Valley Equity and Justice, mentioned Customs and Border Protection apparently believed his grandmother’s driving patterns had 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,” mentioned 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 asked them back, ‘Is something wrong with that? Am I not supposed to be doing that or why are you questioning me about this?’ and they were like ‘Oh, no, it just seems suspicious,’” Ojeda recounted.

Ojeda mentioned 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 feel every day,” he mentioned. “Driving around, I joke with my co-workers: ‘Which chapter of 1984 is this?’”

Wendy Fry and Khari Johnson write for CalIssues