A/75/590 migration and using risk-based taxonomies to demarcate and flag cases. 137 Globally, States, particularly those on the frontiers of large numbers of migrant arrivals, have been using various ways to pre-empt and deter those seeking to legally apply for asylum. This type of deterrence policy is very evident in Greece, Italy and Spain, 138 countries which are on the geographic frontiers of Europe, which increasingly rely on violent deterrence and “pushback” policies. 46. One submission highlighted the use by Croatia of European Un ion-funded technologies to detect, apprehend and return refugees and migrants along the Balkan route, travelling from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia through Croatia to reach the Schengen border. 139 This submission alleges hundreds of human rights abuses in the past three years, including “illegal pushbacks” that reflect “inherently racist cleavages”. 140 Surveillance technologies such as drones and helicopters with automated searchlights “have been weaponized against people on the move, making them easier to detect and thus compounding their vulnerability and the dangers they face”. 141 47. Discriminatory border externalization is also achieved through transnational biometric data-sharing programmes across multiple countries. One submission reported a biometric data-sharing programme between the Governments of Mexico and the United States. 142 As at August 2018, Mexico had deployed the United Statesfunded programme in all 52 migration processing stations. 143 This bilateral programme uses biometric data to screen detained migrants in Mexico who allegedly have tried to cross the United States border or are members of a criminal gang. 144 However, Mexico’s National Institute of Migration has denied having processed biometric data in answer to freedom of access to infor mation requests. 145 4. Immigration surveillance 146 48. One submission reported on the ongoing construction at the United States Mexico border of “a network of 55 towers equipped with cameras, heat sensors, motion sensors, radar systems and a GPS system”. 147 This border enforcement system also surveils the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation, located in Arizona approximately one mile from the border. 148 This “smart” border surveillance system replaces a prior one, which research showed had failed to prevent undocumented border crossings, but instead had shifted migrants’ routes, thereby increasing their vulnerability to injury, isolation, dehydration, hyperthermia and exhaustion – and deaths. 149 Another submission notes that researchers and civil society organizations __________________ 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 20/25 Submission by Dimitri van den Meerssche. See www.statewatch.org/news/2017/november/eu-spain-new-report-provides-an-x-ray-of-thepublic-funding-and-private-companies-in-spain-s-migration-control-industry/ and www.efadrones.org/countries/italy/. Submission by Border Violence Monitoring Network. Ibid. Ibid. Submission by Privacy International et al. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Anil Kalhan, “Immigration surveillance”, Maryland Law Review, vol. 74, No. 1 (2014) (defining immigration surveillance as the product of dramatically expanded identification, mobility tracking and control, and information-sharing, and evasion of the traditional substantive and procedural legal protections that have typically been relied upon to protect non-citizens from a host of human rights abuses). Submission by Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Ibid. Samuel Norton Chambers et al., “Mortality, surveillance and the tertiary ‘funnel effect’ on the U.S.-Mexico border: a geospatial modeling of the geography of deterrence”. 20-14872