Illinois Democrat Proposes Bill to End US Border Surveillance Tower Program

The investigation, "Dying on Camera," found that nearly one in four deaths the publication analyzed between 2015 and early 2026 took place within the towers' advertised range. It also showed that the Department of Homeland Security does not keep track of those deaths or of any other metric measuring the towers' success or failure.

Ramirez, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, cited that reporting in announcing the bill, saying nearly 1,100 people had died within range of the billion-dollar surveillance tower system between 2015 and 2026. "The towers that we have paid a billion dollars to just don't work," she said.

The legislation, called the Reimagining Safety Act, was developed in consultation with community groups and local and state representatives. Two advocacy organizations helped shape the calls to end the tower program: Just Futures Law, which focuses on immigrant rights and racial justice, and Mijente, which describes itself as a vehicle for building independent Latinx political power. Both groups published a joint report earlier this year on technology used by ICE.

The bill is meant to be part of a broader proposal to replace the Department of Homeland Security with a new Department of Community Safety, while moving CISA, FEMA, TSA and customs functions to other existing federal agencies. Ramirez's office has not released the text of the legislation and says it will come in the next few weeks.

Public support for abolishing ICE has grown following the second Trump administration's highly visible enforcement operations in American cities, the buildout of its detention apparatus, and shootings by ICE and CBP agents. Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a delivery driver, was shot in the back by an ICE agent last weekend in Austin, Texas.

For Ramirez, abolishing ICE alone is not enough. At a press conference in Chicago on Wednesday, she said, "There's no question that DHS has to be dismantled. We need to provide them a road map in how we do it."

Ramirez described the legislation's aims this way: "We're limiting state surveillance, we're reigning unlawful abuses of data and curbing the militarized enforcement. We're beginning the process of establishing a separate civil immigration system."

Bills to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security have been introduced before, but previous proposals have not advanced far. This one also faces a steep uphill battle in Congress, where even some Democrats favor reforming the department rather than dismantling it outright. Ramirez sits on the House committee that oversees the department and is the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee's cybersecurity subcommittee.

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not offer an immediate response for comment.