22.

Gadsden, AZ
32.55452378, -114.7877653
Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) and Communications Relay Tower 
Dugan Meyer, March 2024

The Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) program has been active since 1996, making these towers some of the oldest still in use today. Manufactured by General Dynamics (and subcontractors including International Towers LLC), the RVSS sensor arrays have a maximum effective range of between 3 and 7.5 miles and include electro-optical and infrared cameras, radar, laser illuminators (used to remotely guide agents on the ground in their pursuit of targets identified with the tower technology), spotlights, and sometimes loud hailers. In addition to these standard monopole towers, RVSS camera arrays are also sometimes placed on other structures, including water towers and buildings. Communication relay towers like the one pictured here are crucial components of the network of surveillance infrastructure deployed throughout the borderlands, as they enable the transmission of video and other sensor data to centralized control rooms where it can be analyzed.

The towers in this photograph stand on the banks of the Sality Canal in Gadsden, Arizona, a colonia within the Yuma metropolitan area. Yuma County is an agricultural powerhouse, the highest producing region in the state for crops by dollar value and the producer of a significant portion of the leafy vegetables consumed in the United States. This production relies almost entirely on Mexican agricultural workers; industry-wide, around 40,000 workers cross the border legally each year to perform this labor. In Gadsden, many of these workers gather before dawn each day in company parking lots beneath RVSS towers like this one where they board the repurposed school buses that take them to the fields.