The Border Heat Ray Is the Dystopia Nobody Voted For

The Pentagon is lending the Department of Homeland Security a weapon designed to make human skin feel like it is burning, and DHS gets to figure out how to aim it at the border. CNN reported on October 21 that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo authorizing a seven-month loan of the Active Denial System, better known as the border heat ray, for testing and for developing tactics for possible border operations. The authorization stops short of approving operational use, but it hands a military crowd-control weapon to an immigration enforcement agency and tells it to write the playbook.

The border heat ray is mounted on an armored vehicle and fires an invisible beam of electromagnetic energy that reaches a little more than half a mile, according to the US military. When the beam touches skin, it produces a burning sensation that Pentagon officials have previously compared to the blast of heat felt when opening a hot oven. Military officials have said the tingling lasts between ten and fifteen minutes, and they described what they call an instinctive and irresistible urge to run from the effect. That is pain engineered to force movement, pointed at migrants and border communities.

The loan covers a single Active Denial System and began in September, according to CNN's reporting. The memo puts the system under DHS control: the department is responsible for how it is employed and for writing the tactics and procedures, and Pentagon personnel are barred from operating it. No test location is named. No test plan is described. The request did not specify where officials intend to test the device or under what circumstances it might eventually be used. A defense official told CNN the agency could seek another period of use for the border heat ray after the loan ends, which means the loan period is a trial run with an open door at the end.

The border heat ray is a weapon of war, pointed at migrants

This idea is not new, and its history is not reassuring. The system was sent to Afghanistan and was never used in active combat, according to the reporting. Officials weighed deploying it at the southern border during the first Trump administration, and a former US official told CNN it also came up during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. It keeps resurfacing wherever the question is how to make large groups of people move without looking like force is being used. Now the border heat ray is being rehearsed for the border, and the rehearsal itself should count as news.

The "nonlethal" label on the border heat ray deserves skepticism. The military demonstrated the system in Wellton, Arizona, in April 2017, and officials insist the sensation is intense but temporary. Border advocates point out that temporary is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The Southern Border Communities Coalition, a network of organizations advocating for border communities, condemned the decision as another step toward the militarization of the region, according to La Prensa San Diego. Ricky Garza, the coalition's border policy counsel, said, "Customs and Border Protection is already infamous for abuse and violence. The last thing they need is more untested dangerous military equipment." Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee's US-Mexico Border Program, told the outlet the decision risks normalizing the use of painful force against migrants and border residents. These are the people who live with whatever gets tested next.

The paperwork is full of blank spaces

The authorization names no test location, describes no scenario for use, and cites no public safety review. When CNN asked for comment, the Pentagon referred questions to DHS, and a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said the agency continues to evaluate technology for its work without describing any testing plan. So the border heat ray changes hands, and the details get filled in later by the agency that asked for it. That is the opposite of how dangerous technology is supposed to be introduced to civilian life. First comes the public debate, the safety standards, the lines that cannot be crossed. Here, the memo skips straight to field testing and lets the tactics get written on the job.

According to our earlier reporting, a federal judge recently barred DHS from election-related investigations in nine states after finding that error-prone government lists could sweep US citizens into the effort, and this column previously applauded the ban on Airbnb checkout chores as a small win for ordinary travelers. The same department keeps expanding what it is allowed to do, and the checks keep arriving after the fact.

The border heat ray may never be fired at a migrant. That is the defense, and it is worth stating exactly what it admits: the government is preparing a directed-energy weapon for a civilian border mission, and the preparation is treated as routine. Pain is being classified as a procedure. A weapon the military would not use in a war zone is being evaluated for use on people seeking asylum, work, and a way through. If that sounds like a dystopia, it is because nobody voted for this version of border security. The loan ends, the request for more time goes in, and the line between testing a weapon and using it gets thinner every month the program survives.