![]() The others walked toward him, ready to give up.ĬBP agents monitor remote camera feeds from scores of cameras.įrom the shipping container, it was impossible to know anything about the group aside from what was visible on-screen. “He just apprehended that guy, and that’s the group right there.” We watched as one member of the group tried to wrestle the Border Patrol agent. He had to raise his voice so I could hear him over the endless hum of the servers that took up half the 16-by-20-foot room. “That’s the agent,” he said, pointing at a vaguely person-shaped silhouette on one of the screens. Then he turned to me and explained what we were looking at. “On your tail, there’s another group of two, probably about 50 yards behind you,” the camera operator in Tucson told one of the ground agents by radio. The migrants must have noticed the helicopter first: an EC-120 Colibrí, Spanish for “hummingbird.” Then came a pair of Border Patrol agents on foot. They had been betrayed by their own body heat. Their clothing may have helped them blend in with the cholla cacti and spiky ocotillo plants of the Sonoran Desert, but it couldn’t fool the Predator’s infrared camera. The 11 migrants appeared as small figures on a pair of screens, bright white smudges moving across a gray background. Each agent sat before five monitors: the pilot flew the drone while the camera operator focused on tracking the group’s movements. Two Customs and Border Protection agents tracked the group from a cramped shipping container on base that was being used as a temporary ground control station. Nearly 150 miles away at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, the migrants were on display.
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