Spyware, Surveillance Towers, and Death Flights: How the U.S. and Mexican Governments Use Israeli Technologies to Abuse Human Rights

By Rachel Steinig, J.D. Candidate, NYU Law Class of 2026 and Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) Lowinson Scholar.

The Trump administration’s attempts to beef up security at the border and limit immigration have brought increased public scrutiny to the ways in which the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border can negatively impact human rights. Less is known about how Israeli exports of security technologies facilitate these human rights abuses. According to Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist specializing on the impacts of migration technologies on people crossing borders, “For years, Israeli companies have been at the forefront of developing surveillance technology. They test it out on Palestinians and then export it to the rest of the world.”

This blog post begins by providing a brief overview of Israel’s role in the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, facilitated by both the U.S. and Mexican governments purchasing data-intensive technologies from Israeli weapons manufacturers, which they use to surveil those crossing the border, including asylum-seekers. From there, the post turns to explore the specific ways in which Israeli weapons technology and spyware have been used by the Mexican government to enact state terror and grave human rights abuses.

The use of border technologies by the United States in immigration enforcement is not something new, nor is the role of Israel. According to immigration reporter Gaby Del Valle^[1], “No country has benefited more from the arming of the U.S.-Mexico border than Israel, whose many defense contractors have sold their technology to a nation equally committed to spying on and removing an unwanted population.” There are multiple examples of Israeli technologies being used to construct the “digital border wall,” which, according to a report by Mijente, Just Futures Law, and the No Border Wall Coalition, is made up of “border technology such as surveillance towers, drones, cameras, and automated license plate readers.”

In 2014, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) awarded a nine-year, $145 million contract to Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers, to develop a system of Integrated Fixed Towers (IFTs), which, according to their website, operate 24/7, provide “360-degree, long-range surveillance,” and transmit “information to command centers for Border Patrol agents.” Elbit justifies the need for their fully-autonomous systems to be powered by AI (Artificial Intelligence) by arguing that “Without a clear picture of what is happening in the field, agents can’t differentiate between a back-packer or a drug-trafficker.”

According to the Deadly Digital Border Wall Report, “the [integrated fixed] towers send this data to a remote command control center system called TORCH, which Elbit first developed for Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank. On the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration agents use the information to track and apprehend people.” Per a Vox investigation, IFTs are specifically used by CBP to patrol more remote areas of the border, and they “are 80- to 140-feet-tall metal structures, similar to radio towers, laced with day and night sensors and radars. The most common type of IFT used can surveil up to a radius of around 6 miles from where they’re stationed…They work in concert with ground sensors and some other types of mobile and surveillance equipment.”

Per an investigation conducted by Gaby Del Valle, “In a testimony given before a House Homeland Security subcommittee, the assistant commissioner of CBP’s Office of Technology and Acquisition said the [IFT] technology had been used in Israel, on terrain similar to the Sonoran desert, and ‘what we saw in the demos was very impressive.’” In 2019, CBP granted Elbit Systems another $26 million contract to install additional IFTs in Arizona. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based nonprofit digital rights group, released a map and dataset of more than 577 surveillance towers (as of March 18, 2025) installed by CBP along the border with Mexico, and report that “CBP…is planning yet another massive expansion of surveillance towers at the U.S.-Mexico border…CBP intends to bring the Remote Video Surveillance System and IFT systems under one program and, over the next decade, begin upgrading 135 existing towers with new capabilities, technologies and sensors, while also installing 307 new towers along the Southern border.” 

Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, is a major target of the non-violent, Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and is “a world leader in drone and military surveillance technologies, playing a major role in racist walls, border surveillance, forced displacement and other war crimes,” according to BDS. The Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid “Stop the Wall Campaign” reports that Elbit Systems “has become one of the world’s premiere [sic] ‘security and defence,’ firms, specializing in military electronics, surveillance systems, Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs or ‘drones’), and security systems.” According to an investigation by the American Friends Service Committee, Elbit weapons supplied to the Israeli military have “repeatedly been used in war crimes” that Israel has committed during several major military offensives in Gaza. For example, in April of 2024 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) used a Hermes 450 drone manufactured by Elbit to bomb three vehicles from the World Center Kitchen humanitarian aid convoy in the central Gaza Strip, killing seven aid workers.

The United States’ employment of Elbit’s IFT system at the U.S.-Mexico border is indicative of a concerning trend: the use of new technology and AI at borders increases inequalities and undermines the human rights of migrants. According to Amnesty International, the use of these data-intensive technologies at borders can threaten the right to seek asylum, to non-refoulement, equality, and non-discrimination. For example, “[d]igitized securitization and surveillance measures may have the effect of discouraging people from exercising their right to claim asylum.” In addition to binational border tech infrastructure undermining the rights of migrants, “Lawyers who serve migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border face surveillance and attempts to suppress their work by U.S. and Mexican government officials.”

The border tech infrastructure is also composed of biometric surveillance technology, in addition to phone and vehicle surveillance. For example, the Israeli cell-phone hacking company Cellebrite, the Atlanta-based Grayshift, and Magnet Forensics of Canada all have various contracts with CBP and ICE for hacking software that serve different purposes, such as hacking into locked cell phones. Cellebrite is reportedly a “favored digital-forensics provider for authoritarian regimes around the world.” In 2021, Cellebrite announced its withdrawal from Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Russia, and Venezuela, “partially due to concerns regarding human rights and data security.” Cellebrite has been used by Chinese officials in Hong Kong to hack into the phones of pro-democracy protestors, by police in Botswana to hack into the phones of detained journalists, by the Russian government’s “Investigative Committee” to hack opposition figures, by the U.S. government to unlock the phone of Thomas Crooks, who attempted to assassinate President Trump, and by the Israeli government to unlock the phones of alleged Hamas operatives after the October 7th attack. In September of 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) entered into an $11 million-dollar contract with Cellebrite, allowing ICE agents to break into locked phones in their physical possession. ICE and other U.S. government agencies justified entering into the contract with Cellebrite by arguing that ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center “has a need for Universal Forensic Extraction Devices (UFEDs) and related services for investigative purposes. Specifically, the Government requires the capability to perform logical, file system, physical, and password data extraction for mobile electronic devices.” 

While not directly connected to Israel, the CBP One Mobile Application is a further example of such data-intensive border technology resulting in human rights abuses. CBP One’s mandatory use of facial recognition and GPS tracking “raises serious concerns about privacy, surveillance, and potential discrimination, further complicating the asylum seeking process,” according to Amnesty. In early 2023, multiple nonprofits that assist asylum seekers at the border revealed that the CBP One app was “blocking many Black people from being able to file their claims because of facial recognition bias in the tech…effectively barring them from their right to request entry into the US.” The US’s use of border technologies in immigration enforcement exacerbates the racial discrimination and abuse that Black migrants already face in their migration journeys, discrimination that is magnified by deterrence and border externalization policies. For instance, in March of 2025, the Trump administration rebranded the CBP One app as “CBP Home” with a self-deportation reporting feature, telling migrants who entered the U.S. through CBP One that they should “leave immediately.”

Like the U.S. government, the Mexican government is also a user of Israeli surveillance technology. According to the investigation conducted in El papel de Israel en la militarización de México (in English, “The role of Israel in the militarization of Mexico”), “The federal and state governments [of Mexico] have purchased weapons of war from Israel (used against civilians in Mexico), including espionage and digital surveillance technology, and have contracted Israeli institutions and companies for consulting and training of the armed forces and police forces” [translated from Spanish]. 

The use of Israeli technology by the Mexican government has roots going far back. In May of 2024, the Historical Clarification Mechanism (MEH) of the Truth Commission established by the Mexican government announced that Israeli aircraft were purchased and used by the Mexican government in the 1970s to carry out “Death Flights,” which were a common practice of the Mexican government during the Cold-War-era Dirty War, and consisted of throwing people from an airplane into the sea after they had been tortured, some of them still alive. This was a technique used to disappear students, guerrillas and political dissidents during those years of war. In August of 2024, an investigation revealed a list presumably from the Mexican Army with the names of 183 possible victims of the 1974 “Death Flights.” In the 1970s and 1980s, the Mexican government purchased 5 Arava aircraft from Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), later used for the “Death Flights.” By 1979, Mexico had developed a striking dependence on Israeli technology: Mexico had almost 30 planes from Israel Aircraft Industries and had separately purchased 60 M-65 mortars from the Israeli company Soltam Systems. In 1976, a Mexican technical mission traveled to Israel to analyze the possibility of establishing an Arava assembly plant in Mexico to manufacture aircraft for export to other countries in the Americas, where they would be used for counterinsurgency activities.

As of 2018, three types of drones used by the Mexican military for border control were of Israeli origin: “The latest in a long list of purchases was made in 2015, when Mexico ordered two Dominator 2 XP UAVs from the Israeli company Aeronautics Ltd.,” according to Aracely Cortés-Galán. Aeronautics’ website boasts that “The company’s close working relationship with armed forces worldwide has given it an in-depth understanding of the military environment.” In 2021, Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense, or SEDENA, sought to expand its drone fleet, and contracted maintenance service for its two Israeli-made Hermes 900 drones, which were purchased from Elbit Systems. 

However, perhaps the most infamous use of Israeli technology by the Mexican government is that of the spyware Pegasus, the world’s most powerful spyware which, once it infects your phone, essentially turns it into a “24-hour surveillance device.” According to an investigation and 3D mapping by Forensic Architecture, “NSO Group Technologies Ltd. was founded in Israel in 2010 by Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio, and Omri Lavie. Part of an ecosystem of Israeli cyber-weapons companies—developed in the context of its ongoing occupation and settler-colonial surveillance of Palestinians—NSO’s Pegasus malware has reportedly been used in at least 45 countries worldwide since 2015 to infect the phones of activists, journalists and human rights defenders.” According to a New York Times investigation, Mexico became Pegasus’ first client, and grew into the most prolific user of the spyware. From 2012 to 2018, the Mexican government spent about $300 million to purchase Pegasus spyware, which it allegedly used to hack over 700 cellphones, “the largest number of surveillance subjects submitted by any state client of the NSO Group.” 

Tomás Zerón de Lucio, former director of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency, was reportedly the key contact for negotiating the purchase of Pegasus for Mexico. Pegasus was then used by the Mexican state to target a number of groups, investigators, and reporters who could potentially undermine the government’s position on the enforced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teacher Training School in Mexico’s Guerrero state in 2014. The Commission for Truth and Access to Justice, created by the government of former President López Obrador, concluded that the students’ disappearance was a “state crime.” While the government claimed that the students were executed by a drug cartel that then burned the bodies to ashes in a garbage dump, serious doubts regarding the government’s explanation persist as a team of international forensic experts determined that this was scientifically impossible. Eleven years later, there has been minimal progress towards justice; Ayotzinapa continues as “one of the deepest open wounds in the country’s collective memory.”

Tomás Zerón faces multiple arrest warrants from the Mexican state for abduction, torture of witnesses and tampering with evidence in the investigation into the disappearance of the 43 students in 2014. However, Zerón is reportedly taking refuge in an upscale apartment building in Tel Aviv owned by Israeli tech giant David Avital. Mexico announced a request for Zeron’s extradition in September 2020, but the case has been complicated because Mexico and Israel do not have an extradition agreement. In addition, “despite Mexico requesting Zeron’s return… Israeli officials told the Times that the country is not complying in retribution for Mexico’s condemnation of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians before international bodies, such as the United Nations Security Council.” In December 2024, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum promised parents of the 43 students that she would pressure Israel, a country with which she did not rule out breaking relations, to insist on Zerón’s extradition. On February 12, 2025, the Ambassador of Israel in Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger, reported that the legal teams of both countries continued to work on the extradition of Zerón, but that there was no new progress to date, despite reports by Sheinbaum’s administration that they continue to send letters to Israel requesting his extradition

With more than two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a collective crime “sustained by the complicity of influential Third States that have enabled longstanding systemic violations of international law by Israel,” it is crucial to remember that Israeli violence is not a new phenomenon, and is not confined to Palestine. The same technologies used by the IDF to commit genocide in Palestine have been purchased by the U.S. and Mexican governments, and used to militarize borders, surveil asylum-seekers and human rights defenders, and forcibly disappear students and political dissidents. While bringing increased visibility to the collaboration in weapons technology and spyware between Israel, the United States, and Mexico is an important first step, meaningful accountability for these grave human rights abuses, an end to impunity, and reparations (restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition) for victims are crucial.

 [1] Gaby Del Valle is an independent immigration reporter. She is the co-founder of BORDER/LINES, a newsletter about immigration policy. She previously worked as an immigration reporter at VICE News; a reporter at The Goods, a Vox vertical about consumer culture, where she covered labor, wealth, and multi-level marketing companies; and as a staff writer at The Outline, where she covered power. Her work has also appeared in The Nation, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, and other publications.