Federal authorities have failed to justify their plan to line the Canadian border with video-surveillance towers or give enough consideration to residential privacy, Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan said this week.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection “should place adequate safeguards and implement the requisite protocols” that “ensure that Vermonters are free from intrusive 24-hour surveillance while living or visiting near the border for legitimate reasons,” Donovan wrote March 15 in public comments on the proposal.
The concerns expressed by Vermont’s top law enforcement official mirror those of the Vermont ACLU — and residents of Derby, where one of the planned towers would be built.
The federal plan calls for eight camera sites in Vermont and two in New York. Towers equipped with video cameras would be installed in Derby, Franklin, Richford and Troy. Antennae bearing the equipment would be added to existing buildings in the village of Derby Line and in Highgate.
The highest proposed tower, in New York, would reach 180 feet. Towers in Vermont would reach a maximum of 120 feet, according to the plan.
A 30-day public comment period has just ended; the next step is issuance of a final environmental impact statement. No date for that has been set, and no timetable for construction has been issued.
Border officials say the cameras, part of a program used by federal agents since 1996, would let the agency watch over remote areas without sending Border Patrol agents into the field.
“Without the 24/7 surveillance capability, there is the probability that cross-border violations will increase,” the agency said in a draft document.
In his public comments, Donovan acknowledged the “importance of border monitoring” to curb illegal activities and “protect our citizens from known terrorist threats.”
And he wrote that he expects Customs and Border Protection to balance its needs with the public’s interests, using the “very powerful tools at their disposal for the specific purposes for which they were granted, and no more.”
But he believes the federal agency has not adequately examined how installing the cameras might intrude on people’s expectations of privacy.
The attorney general cited a tower stationed near San Diego in 2017 under the same Customs and Border Protection program. That tower was used to “monitor political opposition” to then-President Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall along the southern border, according to a 2019 article by The Intercept, which Donovan cited. Officials justified that monitoring because of the “‘emerging threat of demonstrations,’” wrote the online news outlet.
“Our local communities should not be subjected to the type of surveillance that has been observed in practice with respect to lawful, peaceful protests in other areas of the country,” Donovan wrote.
At a Derby Selectboard meeting last Monday, residents and local officials peppered Erik Lavallee, the acting Border Patrol agent in charge of the Newport station, with questions about the proposal.
A temporary mobile surveillance tower has already been set up. Lavallee said the camera tower is operational and is sending images to the Border Patrol’s dispatch center.
The impromptu forum began with a pointed exchange between Lavallee and board member Brian Smith, who is also a Vermont state legislator.
“Are you going to be able to watch families playing in their yard?” Smith asked.
“That’s not the intent of this camera at all,” Lavallee replied.
“But will you be able to?” pressed Smith.
Lavellee answered that if a family’s home is right along the border line, “potentially.”
The border agent said he recognized that would be concerning to people living around the tower, “but our intents and the whole purpose behind it has nothing to do with spying on U.S. citizens, has nothing to do with surveilling folks going about their legal business — it’s to stop people from crossing illegally.”
Jenna Hamelin said later that she lives right below the temporary tower. She said it can be seen through her house’s windows.
“We just feel strongly that it’s a huge invasion of our privacy,” Hamelin said. “We’ve been outside, and you can just watch the camera pan in our direction. It makes us feel very uncomfortable.”
Another speaker, who didn’t identify themselves, questioned why the proposal wasn’t warned in the town’s newspaper of record. And the speaker expressed concern that Lavallee was unable to answer several questions when the deadline for public comment — March 15 — was only a few days away.
Over the course of the meeting, Lavallee did reveal some new specifics: that “we don’t have” facial-recognition software; the towers won’t replace the jobs of existing agents; and data recorded by the surveillance systems could be used for prosecution.
