Eye in the sky: The feds have quietly built surveillance towers along the Canadian border in Vermont, New York

Nearly four years ago, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials outlined a proposal for a line of surveillance towers along the Canadian border in Vermont and New York. Since then, VtDigger has found, the agency has been quietly making good on its plans.

The federal government has built surveillance towers in recent years on at least three of the sites it identified to state and local officials, and to the public, in 2021, including one in Derby, Vermont, and two in the lakeside New York community of Champlain.

There is almost certainly more border surveillance infrastructure in the region. Agency records describe at least five existing U.S. Customs and Border Protection towers in the federal immigration enforcement jurisdiction covering Vermont and parts of New York. That jurisdiction is called the Swanton Sector, based in the northern Vermont town of the same name.

The agency said in 2022 that it was considering building five additional towers in the Swanton Sector in the future, according to records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy and free speech advocacy organization.

Overall, the feds plan to install more than 1,000 new towers across the country’s northern and southern borders by 2034, The Intercept reported earlier this year. The plans come as national leaders on both sides of the political aisle, including president-elect Donald Trump, have pitched tough border enforcement policies in recent years.  

In 2021 Swanton Sector plans, officials said the towers would allow them to patrol more of their jurisdiction, which spans about 300 miles and also includes the New Hampshire-Canada border, without employing additional personnel or vehicles.

“The increasing frequency and nature of illegal cross-border activities, as well as the geographic area over which these activities occur, create a need for a technology-based surveillance capability that can effectively collect, process, and distribute information,” federal officials stated in the “purpose and need” section of the 2021 documents.

But the plans drew pointed criticism from some of the state’s top leaders, including all three members of its congressional delegation at the time, largely over concerns that the government had not properly taken into account nearby homeowners’ privacy.

TJ Donovan, the state’s attorney general at the time, blasted the proposal in comments saying that the government had failed to justify a need for the new infrastructure.

Despite that outcry, there’s been scant, if any, public accounting since then of whether any of the towers were built. VtDigger used a combination of on-the-ground reporting, satellite imagery and public records — as well as interviews with local residents, town officials and experts on border surveillance technology — to verify the presence of three.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not provide answers to questions VtDigger sent for this story about the current status of the tower plans.

VtDigger also sent similar questions to the offices of Vermont’s three current members of Congress, two of whom — U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. — raised concerns about the plans several years ago.

Sanders’ office did not provide answers ahead of publication, while spokespeople for Welch and the office of U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., sent brief statements saying they did not have updated information about the construction of surveillance towers.

Aaron White, a spokesperson for Welch, added that the senator “encourages CBP to consult regularly with the neighboring communities.” Sophie Pollock, a Balint spokesperson, said her boss was “keeping an eye” on the use of the technology in the region.

A surveillance network

All three of the towers VtDigger verified consist of a single, tall pole and a triangular platform at the top containing what appear to be arrays of cameras and antennas. They’re all within a half-mile of Canada and sit close to border crossing stations.

The Derby tower is visible to the east after exiting Interstate 91 northbound before the crossing into Canada. It’s at the top of a field owned by Phil Letourneau, a retired farmer who’s lived in the same house across the street since he was in elementary school.

The two other towers VtDigger identified are located across Lake Champlain in the town of Champlain, N.Y., which borders both Vermont and Canada. The town includes the village of Rouses Point, which is connected to Alburgh by a bridge.

One of the New York towers is located in a field near a duty-free store just south of the port of entry on Interstate 87. It’s about a half-mile from several homes to the east.

The other tower is located about 1.5 miles to the west at the end of Glass Road, a quiet, residential street that dead-ends at the border and has about 10 small homes.

The government’s 2021 proposal included eight potential locations for “new tower construction,” including the three VtDigger viewed while reporting this story, as well as sites in the Vermont communities of North Troy, Richford, Franklin and Highgate. VtDigger did not find towers at the other proposed locations.

On a recent snowy morning in Derby, Letourneau accompanied a reporter up to the hill near his home, pointing out along the way a large “Trump 2024” flag he had strung up nearby. Along the road at the foot of the hill, he has a large white and red sign telling state and federal law enforcement to “beware” and stay off of his land.

But he does allow the government to lease a slice of that land to operate a surveillance tower, a deal Letourneau said he signed off on because he thinks the tower is an important tool for local U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. He said he’s heard for years about those same agents arresting people who attempt to enter the U.S. on the road that runs along the hill and, at points, parallels the Canadian border.

Letourneau declined to say how much the government pays him for its lease. The tower has two cameras, according to Letourneau, one of which typically points west toward the crossing while the other points east toward his farm and several houses nearby. “We need something they can work with to catch those aliens,” he said, referring to people who cross the border without authorization. “They’re coming right and left.”

Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that migrant apprehensions in the Swanton Sector have increased dramatically in recent years. In the 2022 federal fiscal year, which ran from October 2021 to September 2022, U.S. Border Patrol agents made about 1,050 apprehensions — but that figure jumped to nearly 19,500 in the 2024 fiscal year, which started in October 2023 and ended in September 2024.

(U.S. Border Patrol is the law enforcement arm of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, responsible for policing segments of the border between official ports of entry.)

Swanton Sector agents have made more apprehensions than agents on any other part of the northern border in recent years, the data shows. U.S. Border Patrol told VtDigger in August that this prompted it to reassign more agents to Vermont, New York and New Hampshire from other border patrol jurisdictions, including those in the southwest.

Area immigrant communities have noticed an increased presence of immigration enforcement personnel in northern Vermont this year, VtDigger also reported — a buildup that came as federal officials placed new limits on people seeking asylum protections, too.

To be sure, the number of apprehensions on the northern border is far lower than on the southern border. In the 2024 fiscal year, U.S. Border Patrol made about 25,000 total apprehensions in the north, versus about 1.5 million apprehensions in the south.

There is also a far larger network of surveillance technology, including camera towers, along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital privacy nonprofit.

Maass and other researchers have spent more than a year mapping the locations of hundreds of surveillance towers, facial recognition cameras and other pieces of technology on the southern border, some of which have the ability to operate autonomously.

The towers on the southern border usually include cameras that capture visible and infrared light, according to Maass, as well as a laser illuminator and a spotlight.

The government’s 2021 plans state that the towers in Vermont and New York would include “a suite of sensors and/or communications equipment” that would provide “surveillance, detection, and interdiction,” though the plans do not include specifics on the type of equipment they would use.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that cameras likely similar to those in use in the Swanton Sector can detect movement up to 7.5 miles away, though Maass’ research has noted that range can actually vary.

Letourneau said he’s been told that the cameras on his land can see for seven miles in each direction, both during the day and at night.

Brian Smith, who is Derby’s representative in the Vermont House, joined then-U.S. Rep. Welch and other state and local officials in 2021 to voice concerns with the tower proposals. Smith said he still worries about the government’s ability to surveil the area around Letourneau’s farm. But he also thinks most residents have gotten used to the tower’s presence.

“I think most people in town, if you asked them about the border patrol tower in Derby, they’d know what you were talking about,” Smith said. “I guess it’s just part of life here now.”

‘Increased harm’

Vermont leaders are not the only ones who have questioned the impacts of border surveillance towers in recent years. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for one, has pointed to a 2020 RAND Corp. study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that found “strong” evidence certain surveillance towers were not leading to more border apprehensions, in addition to “weak” evidence that other towers were having any effect on apprehensions at all.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported last month that nearly a third of all surveillance towers used by U.S. Border Patrol agents on the southern border were broken, with a source within the agency blaming outdated tower equipment and deferred maintenance.

“It just seems like a system that is doomed for failure,” Maass said in an interview.

Other research from the University of Arizona has found that even as the agency says the towers help keep its own personnel safe, the technology could be exacerbating the risks migrants face while attempting to cross the border without authorization.

Geoff Boyce — who works with the university’s Binational Migration Institute and is also an assistant professor in the School of Geography at University College Dublin — co-authored a 2019 study that found “a significant correlation” between surveillance tower locations in the southern Arizona desert and where people died attempting to cross the U.S-Mexico border there. The authors argue that the towers’ presence encouraged migrants to take more dangerous routes.

The technology “has the outcome of maximizing the physiological difficulty imposed by the rugged desert landscape, resulting in increased harm to the lives and bodies of unauthorized border crossers,” the authors wrote in the peer-reviewed paper.

While Boyce’s research focused on Arizona, he said in an interview that the findings could well apply to Vermont and New York, too — states with similarly remote terrain and their own extreme weather, albeit freezing cold rather than scorching heat.

“Where you have towers going up, that is going to have the same kind of effect that we saw in Arizona — basically, putting a squeeze on the migration routes that are available to people,” he said, adding the towers are likely “pushing them — really, corralling them — into more remote areas where it’s going to be easier for them to get lost, and harder to find help if they need it.”

VtDigger is looking for your help to report on immigration and border security in Vermont. Have you seen border surveillance technology in your community? What do you want to know about it? Contact reporter Shaun Robinson at srobinson@vtdigger.org, or find more ways to reach our newsroom on this page.