Invisible Walls: How AI Tech at Europe’s Borders Threatens People Seeking Refuge
With EU funding, more and more countries are using artificial intelligence (AI) systems, drones, and surveillance towers at their borders, and gaining access to the personal data of people seeking refuge in Europe.
At 5 AM on a chilly winter morning in 2022, a group of migrants were preparing an inflatable boat to cross the Evros River that forms the land border separating Turkey and Greece. After battling the strong current, they managed to reach EU soil and hide in the thick vegetation near the river bank – unaware that they had been under constant Greek surveillance long before they had even left Turkish soil.
Shortly after the group emerged from their hiding spot, they were ambushed by a special unit of the Greek police dispatched there after an alert from the Automated Border Surveillance System that Athens has installed and is continuously upgrading in the region.
Now covering much of the border described by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen as Europe’s “shield”, this system can look deep into Turkish territory, boasting a range of up to 15 km, significantly enhancing pre-frontier surveillance for Greece and the EU.
The Automated Border Surveillance System is presented on Greece’s public broadcaster.
The incident, detailed in a police record obtained during this investigation, illustrates Greece’s and Europe’s growing reliance on technology to secure their borders and curb irregular migration.
The arsenal at Europe’s disposal includes artificial intelligence (AI) systems, drones, thermal cameras, dialect detectors, data phone extraction and sophisticated surveillance networks. Depending on the country using them, the aim of deploying these advanced and often costly systems is to help prevent migrant arrivals, scrutinize asylum claims and disrupt smuggling networks.
Proponents argue that they are effective, provide safety and can be even life-saving, helping for example locate people in distress quicker than any border patrol ever could; critics counter that they are full of legal and moral pitfalls, undermining human rights, limiting access to asylum, infringing on migrants’ privacy, and can be used to facilitate collective expulsions—a practice that has been extensively documented and was recently described by the European Court of Human Rights as “systematic.”
A Europe-wide border tech drive
What is indisputable is that Europe is engaged in a technological push at its borders that spans from the Evros River in the Southeast to the English Channel in the Northwest. This push is set against a backdrop of voter anxiety over migration, a widespread resentment toward migrants recorded across the continent, rising far-right movements riding high on anti-migration platforms, and the adoption of hardline policies by traditional parties in response to those developments almost everywhere in Europe.
Migration has played a key role in upending the continent’s political landscape, most notably in the EU’s three largest and most influential member-states, Germany, France and Italy, and has also bolstered the UK’s anti-migrant, right-wing Reform party. In Greece, polls suggest a strong majority wants tougher border protection, while 17% of Greeks name migration as one of the two greatest threats facing the country.
A months-long investigation published today in Solomon, Tagesspiegel (Germany), Inkstick (USA), El País (Spain) and the Wochenzeitung (Switzerland) offers a comprehensive account of Europe’s tech-oriented approach to border control and its many risks, drawing on field reporting from nine countries, more than one hundred interviews with policymakers, NGOs, security officials, asylum seekers and refugees, and an extensive review of public and confidential documents.
Greece: a smart borders leader
As a frontline EU state bordering Turkey, the country hosting the world’s largest refugee population, Greece is spearheading Europe’s efforts to implement AI and other tech solutions in border control.
“Secure your borders, and the money will keep flowing. That’s the message from the EU in a nutshell,” said a top Greek official who has been privy to discussions between Athens, Brussels and European capitals for years.
Greece has secured €1.6 billion from the EU’s Home Affairs funds for 2021-2027. Athens will invest heavily in border security and surveillance, including in AI-based systems, while a very small chunk of these funds is earmarked for improving search-and-rescue capacities, arguably reflecting where European priorities lie.
One flagship EU-funded project is called REACTION. AI-powered drones and vehicles will monitor borders in real-time, detect “threats” before they reach the border, and integrate with systems like EUROSUR, the EU’s border surveillance system. In a promotional video of the project, a swarm of drones can be seen autonomously identifying and tracking persons of interest.
“These drones will have adaptive algorithms learning where to look and what to do, covering vast areas without human intervention,” said a senior migration official familiar with the project, adding that REACTION will be particularly useful in surveilling remote and difficult to reach areas near the border, and will be operational in 2025.
REACTION can detect “threats” before they reach the Greek border.
Justifying the drive for border tech, a senior Greek government source said that “arrivals of more than 30,000 a year are challenging, so we have to focus on stopping criminal smugglers from pushing migrants into Greece any way we can.”
This informal target was dwarfed, however, in 2024, when more than 62,000 new migrant arrivals were recorded – double the limit considered tolerable by Athens, and 40% higher compared to the previous year. Government officials expect migratory pressures to continue in 2025.
This “aggravated period” for migration was the main reason Greece’s migration ministry declined to provide any answers or comments for this investigation on “sensitive operational issues that concern the security of the country.”
Sleepless watchers
While most 2024 arrivals were recorded on Greece’s Aegean islands, the Evros land border remained relatively quiet, and this has not gone unnoticed in the EU.
In late 2024, at a gathering of law enforcement officials from across the bloc in Warsaw, where the EU’s border agency Frontex is headquartered, participants lauded Greece’s success in keeping migrant arrivals at the land border under control. This success was largely attributed to the effective use of what participants called “technical barriers,” people familiar with the meetings recounted.
These barriers include a 5-meter-tall steel fence, already covering a substantial part of the 192-km land border with Turkey. The fence, which is planned to expand, likely with EU funding that had been previously denied to Athens, is augmented by a sophisticated array of technologies, including AI-equipped drones, ubiquitous cameras, and rapid-response teams.
Tech in the service of thwarting migrant arrivals was the focus of a detailed report published in late 2024 by BVMN, an independent network of NGOs that monitor human rights violations at external EU borders. The report describes Evros as a “technological testing ground” for Europe.
The borderline, along with the watchtowers and surveillance antennas dotting the Evros landscape, were recently mapped for the first time by the research group Forensis using satellite imagery, public tenders, and open source material.
The locations of different groups that were stranded in the region were mapped in the platform. Source: Forensic Architecture / Forensis
Camera feeds are relayed to monitoring hubs near border towns, where officers sit behind wooden desks surrounded by screens, watching nearly every inch of the border and pre-frontier areas.
When drones or cameras detect activity, an alarm is triggered. Greek law enforcement will then often alert their Turkish counterparts, sharing coordinates based on shared maps, according to descriptions of the procedure by security officials. Turkish authorities often respond, while Greek patrols step in when they don’t.
This type of bilateral cooperation, which also includes regular in-person meetings between senior Greek and Turkish officials, was confirmed both by Greek and Turkish sources.According to official data, Turkey apprehended more than 225,000 migrants in 2024, with thousands picked up near the border with Greece.
A senior Greek official described these automated systems as akin to sleepless watchers that improve the efficiency of border personnel. Their AI capabilities can “interpret camera footage to identify potential threats such as individuals carrying a weapon” as opposed, say, to a fishing rod. But ultimately, the same official said, the decision on how to act still stays with flesh-and-blood officers.
Erosion of the right to asylum
Pre-frontier screening capabilities raise concerns. These systems not only make crossing the Evros harder, but can potentially prevent people in search of international protection from even coming close to the river.
Frontex’s Fundamental Rights Officer, Jonas Grimheden, for example, warned in an interview that while these technologies can make border management more efficient, they may also prevent people from exercising their right to seek asylum. This right is guaranteed both by Greek and EU law.
Jonas Grimheden of Frontex warned that automated surveillance systems could undermine the right to asylum.
“The use of technology and AI in migration management is increasingly deployed for border control and deterrence, and investment is focused on preventing persons entering [EU territory], which of course often comes at a high human cost, while overlooking the broader socio-economic drivers of migration,” said Hanne Beirens – Director of the Migration Policy Institute Europe.
Greece is supposed to replicate the Evros model at its northern borders with North Macedonia and Albania, again with EU funding secured. A €48 million project under the EU’s 2021-2027 Migration and Home Affairs Fund envisions the installation of automated surveillance systems at these two borders.
This time, however, the goal will be to prevent migrants from moving along the Balkan route towards Western Europe, in what is known as “secondary movement”. Destination countries like Germany have been concerned about secondary migration, raising the issue time and again, including publicly and at the highest level.
Greece has been traditionally reluctant to apply the same level of vigilance at exit as in entry points, police officials said, a deliberate policy that has been well-documented.
Evading Greece through Bulgaria
With Greece’s land border with Turkey becoming increasingly impenetrable, many asylum seekers are opting for an alternative entry point into the EU: Bulgaria. While human rights violations have been consistently reported there as well, and Bulgarian authorities thwart tens of thousands of migrant crossings, the Bulgarian border with Turkey is considered more permeable than Greece’s.
Asylum applications in Bulgaria more than doubled between 2021 and 2023. Greek border officials speculated that this trend could also be attributed to Bulgaria’s softer penalties for migrant smuggling compared to draconian Greek laws, corruption, as well as smuggler networks often being run by Bulgarians as opposed to foreigners in the case of Greece.
The town of Harmanli, just a few kilometres from the Turkish border, illustrates the trend. This is where we meet Hamid Khoshseiar, an Iranian refugee working for Mission Wings, a small NGO.
It was in August, the heat was scorching, and Mission Wings had just received GPS coordinates via WhatsApp from a group of asylum seekers who said they were severely dehydrated and in urgent need of medical help. The NGO passed on the coordinates to the police, requesting an ambulance.
“Such cries of help are increasingly common,” Khoshsiar says.
Bulgaria has also been moving toward “smart border” solutions, partly under EU requirements to be fully admitted into the border-free Schengen area.
Drones and cameras have been bought with funding from Brussels, though implementation has lagged, according to Hope Barker, a researcher from the UK, who has studied the technologization along the Turkish-Bulgarian border.
Bulgaria finally secured admission into Schengen in December 2024, with the EU Commission expecting that both Sofia and Bucharest (Romania was concomitantly admitted) “will…tackle migratory challenges.”
As in Evros, Greek authorities use radar systems and thermal cameras for the early detection of vessels before they leave Turkish waters. In a written response, the Hellenic Coast Guard explained that once suspicious vessels are detected, Greek authorities typically notify their Turkish counterparts asking them to prevent them from entering Greek territorial waters.
Most arrivals in 2024 were recorded on the Aegean islands.
“Greek authorities employ sophisticated surveillance tools to monitor maritime activity around Greek territorial waters [that] allow for the early
detection of vessels, particularly those suspected of engaging in illegal activities such as human trafficking or irregular migration.”
These advanced systems include long- and short-range radars that provide real-time data to patrol units, thermal imaging and high resolution optical cameras that allow the monitoring and detection of vessels 24/7, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drones equipped with high-definition cameras and tracking systems which provide aerial surveillance, especially over difficult to access areas and the open sea.
Tech at the sea border still plays, however, a comparatively minor role, according to a senior government official with direct knowledge of the situation, but the goal is for this to change soon. Currently no systems are based on AI, but the official said that Athens plans to improve this with new EU-funded systems and equipment.
The Coast Guard and police are indeed upgrading their capabilities with substantial EU funding. More than €25 million has been allocated for mobile surveillance technologies, including thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors, while €35.4 million is earmarked for electronic border surveillance systems. Investments also include unmanned helicopters, SUVs equipped with thermal cameras, and maritime surveillance tools.
On top of that, the Greek Defence Ministry has earmarked €21 million for the procurement of sea border surveillance systems, of which €4 million will be spent on the purchase of drones. With legal pathways to asylum still limited and preventive tech amplified, migrants are increasingly turning to well-armed smugglers using speedboats, prone to resorting to violence and dangerous manoeuvres to evade apprehension, making an already dangerous journey even more perilous.
The International Organization for Migration has recorded 173 dead and missing migrants in the Eastern Med in 2024, including 27 children.
As for those who do manage to reach the Greek islands, they often encounter another type of border tech: sophisticated surveillance systems.
According to eyewitnesses, an AI-equipped drone was immediately deployed. It hovered over the protestors, capturing images and video in real time, the feed also relayed to Athens. Almost instantly, the gates separating the different sections of the EU-funded camp were locked, and five asylum seekers were arrested. “The cameras have an AI algorithm that allows them to centre in where there’s commotion, sending alerts to both the Migration Ministry and the camp’s camera hub,” a Migration Ministry official explained.
In the Samos camp, cameras follow every movement of asylum seekers.
These systems can track movement, identify individuals, and lock down sections of the camp with minimal human intervention. “The camp is designed to protect those outside, not inside it,” a person familiar with the camp’s operations said.
Several officials disputed this perspective.
“Protection of [privacy] is important, but security is also a grave issue. The new camps are unfairly criticised, they provide safety. There is no more violence,” a former senior migration official countered, juxtaposing the situation at the new camp in Samos to the “lawless situation” that preceded its opening.
Nevertheless, sources close to the asylum process suggested that the data collected could even influence asylum decisions, with behaviour flagged by the surveillance systems potentially used as grounds for rejection.
Asylum officers are independent according to Greek law, but periodically receive “guidelines” from central authorities, which leaves room to more ad hoc practices, the same sources said.
Hyperion and Centaur: two controversial systems
The Samos camp boasts two flagship surveillance systems, meant to serve as models for similar facilities across Greece: Hyperion and Centaur, named after a Titan and a creature that was half-human and half-horse in Greek mythology respectively.
Hyperion controls entry and exit, requiring asylum seekers to present electronic cards that contain the biometric data of the holder: an electronic photo, fingerprints and the signature of the holder, read by Radio Frequency Identification (RDIF) devices, as well as fingerprint authentication for access. Centaur handles electronic and physical security in and around the facility using AI-powered motion analysis cameras and drones managed by the Migration Ministry.
Both systems have faced scrutiny. In April 2024, Greece’s Data Protection Authority (DPA) imposed a record fine of 175,000 euros on the Migration Ministry for “serious shortcomings” regarding compliance with GDPR rules.
Christos Kalloniatis, a professor at the University of the Aegean and a member of Hellenic DPA’s board, said the Ministry has since responded to the authority’s observations and the government’s responses are currently under review.
Kalloniatis warned that every system is susceptible to bias and it’s up to humans to eliminate such risks. “Bias exists if the people running these systems are depending only on them, rather than using them as tools that help them make a decision.”
He added that preventing and addressing violence is welcome, but it is a problem if asylum seekers, who find themselves in a situation of clear imbalance of power, are not adequately informed about their rights, what happens to their data, who has access to it and why, and do not give their informed consent.
Data privacy concerns
What is worrying Kalloniatis is already a reality on the ground. Migrants’ phones are often confiscated, passwords obtained, and personal data extracted. In some cases, specialised software is used; in others, officials simply photograph the contents on the screens of unlocked phones.
The Greek Police did not respond to requests for comment for this investigation.
The Hellenic Coast Guard said that they can and do confiscate migrants’ phones, but officers follow “strict legal procedures” under judicial oversight, and only as part of broader criminal investigations such as human trafficking or smuggling. “The phones can contain critical evidence, including communication records, GPS data, or contact information, [that can] help authorities track and disrupt trafficking networks,” the Coast Guard said.
This is not always the case however. Three young Syrian asylum seekers interviewed in Samos said that their phones, as well as those of everyone they knew, had been seized by the authorities and returned later without explanation or any suspicion of them being involved in criminal activities. They were never told why their phones had been taken, did not sign any consent forms, and were not told when their devices might be returned.
“They kept mine for a week after asking me to unlock it. Others were asked to write down their passwords alongside the phone model,” said one of the asylum seekers.
Security sources confirmed that confiscations do occur regularly without judicial oversight or proper documentation.
The data extracted from phones is used not only in criminal proceedings, but also in risk assessments and reports by security agencies, such as the Greek police, Frontex and Interpol. “The data analysis is aimed at assisting authorities in identifying individuals, uncovering criminal networks, and ensuring public order and security” the Coast Guard said.
We reviewed three reports based on extracted phone data. One, authored by Frontex, included information and pictures from social media and texts from messaging apps found on migrants’ phones to map smuggling networks. A second report, this time by the Greek police, included geolocation data, message exchanges with facilitators, and photos of tickets and itineraries. The third said migrants had offered their passwords “voluntarily.”
Greek law enforcement officials said that even private photos and other data are sometimes accessed. Even when migrants had them deleted from their physical devices, they are sometimes still accessible from the cloud.
Though one official said that law enforcement is not interested in things like the private photos or moments of owners, this casualness regarding migrants’ privacy appears at odds with the preoccupation of Europeans with protecting their own personal data.
Law enforcement officials also disclosed the informal sharing of information on migrants with counterparts from non-EU countries, bypassing the EU’s GDPR—touted as the toughest privacy and security law in the world—and other legal restrictions. This is done through informal channels like messaging apps between border guards who want to expedite the sharing of information, a process described as too time-consuming when proper channels are used.
Germany: institutionalised intrusiveness
In Germany, unlike the often ad hoc Greek approach to migrants’ data, the extraction of information from phones and the use of contentious AI technology is part of the standard asylum process.
The agency responsible for processing asylum claims is the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). Greek government officials and civil servants who spoke on condition of anonymity described BAMF as one of the most technologically advanced asylum agencies in Europe.
BAMF itself is not modest about its technological prowess, boasting on its website that it is “a pioneer in the digitalisation of the asylum process” and touting its reliance on “innovative technologies.”
The agency employs several such systems, with four standing out: automated dialect recognition, AI-assisted reviews of asylum applications, mass data extraction from mobile phones and transliteration software for Arab names.
BAMF uses the systems “exclusively to support the asylum procedure,” while decisions on asylum applications “will continue to be made exclusively” by specialists, the agency said. Despite these assurances, all these systems have drawn criticism, be it for their impact on the fundamental rights and privacy of asylum seekers, low accuracy, high cost or a combination thereof.
Stephan Scheel, a professor of Political Sociology at Leuphana University Lüneburg who has researched the identification technologies used by BAMF, says mobile phone data extraction is the most problematic of the systems used by the agency.
While asylum seekers theoretically have the right to refuse the extraction of their phone data, the consequences can be severe—refusal may result in the termination of their asylum process, according to documents asylum seekers have to sign.
BAMF gains, therefore, access to an inordinate amount of personal information, including call logs, text messages, photos, metadata, contacts, and even passwords stored in browsers and social media accounts, even from the phones of minors. This data trove is analyzed by automated systems and often used during asylum interviews to evaluate the legitimacy of claims and trustworthiness of asylum seekers.
The system is also riddled with glitches: data is frequently inadequate, older devices are incompatible with BAMF software, and phones with multiple previous owners can produce contradictory results. Efficiency is far from stellar: the system failed to provide usable results in 73% of cases according to the most recent available data.
Another controversial tool in BAMF’s arsenal is the Dialect Recognition Assistant System (DIAS), intended to verify if asylum seekers originate from the regions they claim, having them speak into a telephone receiver and describe a picture. This technology has garnered interest from other countries, including Greece.
“This is a tool we would like to have,” a senior official with direct knowledge of the country’s asylum system said, commenting on the perennial lack of human translators and cultural mediators in the Greek system.
The third tool used by BAMF is the AI-assisted review for asylum applications (ASM), which analyzes asylum seekers’ interview transcripts to flag security-related issues. If the system raises an alert, asylum officers have the option to notify the security authorities. This can result in the rejection of asylum applications.
The fourth system automatically converts Arabic names into Latin script to standardize spellings and infer a person’s region of origin. This technology aims to detect false statements from refugees and is used when no identification documents with Latin spellings are available. The transliteration software is not a precise science either: it suggests three to four possible name origins and in the first half of 2023, 49% of the software’s results could not be verified.
In late July, a solemn memorial was held in a quiet park in central Calais, the port city in France that is the major departure point of small boats crossing the Channel.
The memorial was to honor Dina Al Shammari, a 21-year-old woman crushed to death in an overcrowded dinghy that had departed from here. Attendees, many of whom work with displaced individuals hoping to reach the UK, added her name to a growing list of victims recorded on a scroll that stretched several meters when laid down on the grass.
A growing list of victims is recorded on a scroll that stretches several meters when laid down.
Al Shammari’s death occurred despite the millions invested by the UK government in border deterrence measures. In November, newly elected Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced an additional £75 million (€89.45 million) in funding for border security, bringing the total investment in the newly established Border Security Command to £150 million (€179 million) over the next two years.
Downing Street emphasized technology as a cornerstone in the effort to “investigate and break people smuggling networks.” A Home Office spokesperson described the English Channel crossings as “lethally dangerous and totally unnecessary.”
Several companies have capitalized on this focus, including Anduril Industries, a U.S. defense technology firm headed up by Donald Trump supporter Palmer Luckey, known for its autonomous watchtowers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Anduril has sold similar technology to the British government.
The company claims its Sentry Towers utilize cutting-edge AI, machine learning, and computer vision to detect border crossings. These maritime towers can identify vessels up to 20 kilometers offshore.
Human rights groups in northern France reported that this extensive surveillance infrastructure fails to deter crossings or prevent deaths. Instead, these expensive systems often serve as passive observers, watching people drown or suffocate during perilous journeys.
Drones have also been used in the UK to support prosecutions of people who are criminalised for driving the dinghies into British territory, with sources saying the new government in London will continue this policy.
On the beaches of northern France, migrants now evade drones and patrols by hiding in old World War II bunkers. Those interviewed in Calais are acutely aware of the drones, recognizing their sound and knowing where to take cover.
Faheem*, a 42-year-old Sudanese economics graduate, recounted hearing drones during his recent attempt to cross. “It’s always there,” he said. “You can hear and see the flash.”
Others, like Mustafa*, a young Sudanese man living in a tent, remains undeterred despite frequent tear-gassing by police. For many, returning to their war-torn homelands is not an option, and no deterrence measure—no matter how advanced—is sufficient to dissuade them.
“Is there any other way?” Mustafa asks. “War is everywhere in Sudan.