Man Aims to Secure US-Mexico Border with Drone
March 7, 2017
COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONA - Fifteen years ago, Glenn Spencer left behind his California life — and eventually his marriage — in pursuit of an obsession: “I came out to Arizona to help secure the border.”
On his Cochise County, Arizona ranch — roughly a football field’s distance from the rust metal barrier that separates the United States and Mexico — Spencer lays a drone flat on the dust and puts his seismograph-based detection system to test.
Within seconds, it disappears, humming quietly into an unforgiving sky. But Spencer never loses sight of his drone on a monitor. Underneath a mesh shade, he maneuvers a joystick like a young boy with his new toy.
It may seem like a game, but Spencer’s man-hunting mission carries dire consequences for those who have risked it all crossing the Sonoran Desert.
“The computer is looking at five miles of information, and then when something happens, the algorithm says, ‘Hey, there’s people out there,’” he explains, pointing to visual aids that he has set up in his warehouse for the curious. Once a migrant is detected, a sensor relays the coordinates, which Spencer promptly calls in.
