Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing border management. For everything from facial recognition in airports to the use of predictive algorithms for assessing asylum claims, governments are increasingly relying on automated systems with the assumption that they will be faster, cheaper, and more accurate control of migration. However, behind this promise is the risk of increasing inequality, a rise in privacy issues, as well as a disturbing change away from oversight by humans. Unless robust governance frameworks are implemented now, the cost could be much more than effectiveness.
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The Surge of AI in Migration Governance
AI is not a new idea at the frontier. Systems such as the EU’s ETIAS forecast risk based on previous travel information. Within the U.S., biometric facial recognition at airports is currently processing many millions of passengers each year. In the most experimental part, the use of lie detectors that recognize emotion, like the ones tested by iBorderCt, is reshaping the rules for who can be considered eligible to enter the country. The widespread use of these systems across Europe up to North America signals the beginning of a new age of automated immigration governance.
Discrimination, Surveillance, and Power Imbalances
AI systems are based on historical data, but biases in the past cause discriminatory results:
- Ethnic profiling: Algorithms flagged visas that are disproportionately targeted against specific nationalities.
- Class-based monitoring: These systems can efficiently “score” asylum seekers using proxy indicators of wealth or the source.
- Human rights are being lost: Researchers warn that AI border tools increase inequality, reduce freedoms, and could even compromise the autonomy of people’s minds.
Unregulated, these technologies create a dual system, providing citizens with rights, while immigrants are pushed through inexplicably automated decisions.
Profound Human Costs
Legal and academic critiques point to “subtle erosion” of human dignity. AI threatens to frame migration as a rights-based issue and replaces human judgment with machine-generated logic. A Time article about the U.S.-Mexico border revealed that surveillance towers and robot dogs are a major factor in the hundreds of deaths of migrants in deserts. These devices increase the negative human impact of migration while reducing transparency and decreasing accountability.
Governance Frameworks Are Falling Behind
Even when regulatory systems exist, however, they fail to meet the following criteria:
- The EU’s AI Act designates border AI as “high risk,” but does not explicitly ban AI or impose strict transparency requirements.
- The EU initiatives, like iBorderCtrl, that were designed to identify fraud, were completed but not totally restrained.
- It is the case that the U.S. lacks a unified federal law that regulates border AI, even though DHS tools such as “Hurricane Score” profile asylum seekers. Across jurisdictions, inconsistencies in regulations could lead to an uncontrolled and unregulated migration of technology. Experts are calling for a moratorium regarding high-risk technology and for accountable mechanisms that are enforceable.
What Meaningful Governance Would Look Like
To ensure the protection of the rights of migrant workers and ensure democratic accountability, the governance should include:
- Moratoria a high-risk, untested methods such as emotion detection.
- Transparency legal mandates and human-in-the-loop oversight.
- Due process rights, which include the ability to challenge algorithms that make decisions.
- Impact assessments based on Human Rights Law, not only ethics in technology.
- Policymaking that is inclusive, in which the communities affected by the policy can design frameworks for policies.
The unchecked application of AI in migration control not only undermines the legal protections but also alters our perception of human mobility as well as state accountability. Lawyers, compliance officials, and policymakers need to insist on transparency and safeguards for democracy before the technology is incorporated into a system of infrastructure. This isn’t just about migrants. It’s about how we manage power.
