GPS cell phone app directs illegal border crossers to water
stations, with the distance to each. A user selects one and follows an arrow on the screen.
Some worry the software could lead migrants to damaged or abandoned water stations. Others wonder if it would lull them into a false sense of security or alert the Border Patrol and anti-illegal immigration activists to their whereabouts.
John Hunter, who has planted water barrels in California’s scorching Imperial Valley since the late 1990s, says vandals destroy about 40 of his 150 stations every year. “My concern is for people who arrive and find (the water) doesn’t exist,” he says.
Luis Jimenez, 47, was abandoned by smugglers and rescued by the Border Patrol twice this year — once after hitting his head on a rock and again after being bit by a snake. The Salvadoran migrant, who hopes to reach family in Los Angeles, would try the GPS device but cannot afford one. “If it tells you where to find water, it’s good,” he said at a Tijuana, Mexico, migrant shelter.
The phone designers say they are addressing the concerns, with an eye toward having the phone ready by midsummer. “We don’t want to create a safety tool that actually puts people in more danger,” Stalbaum says.
The water locations beamed to the phones will be updated constantly to ensure accuracy. If the distance is too far, they will not appear on the screen.
The designers, who have raised $15,000 from a UCSD grant and an art festival award, hope to hand out phones for free in Mexico. The phones sell used for about $30 apiece. It costs nothing to add the GPS software.
Distribution would be tightly controlled by migrant shelters and advocacy groups to keep them away from anti-illegal immigration activists. The migrants would need passwords to use them.
U.S. authorities are unfazed. The Border Patrol has begun a $6.7-billion plan to deploy high-tech cameras, sensors, and other technology along the border. “It’s nothing new,” said Border Patrol spokesman Mark Endicott. “We’ve seen handheld GPS devices used by smugglers. … We’re just going to have to learn to adapt to any challenges.”
Critics of illegal immigration say the device is misguided, at best. “If it’s not a crime, it’s very close to committing a crime,” said Peter Nunez, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego. “Whether this constitutes aiding and abetting would depend on the details, but it certainly puts you in the discussion.”
The software is being designed to direct migrants to water stations but Cardenas said they may add other “safety markers,” like roads, towns, and Border Patrol lookouts.
