A $1.27 Billion Surveillance Empire You've Never Heard Of

A 20-Story Spy Tower You Can See From Texas

Stand in downtown El Paso and look south. You’ll see it rising over Ciudad Juárez: Torre Centinela, a 20-floor surveillance command center that Chihuahua state expects to go fully operational in April 2026 [1].

The tower is the nerve center of Plataforma Centinela, an AI-powered surveillance network that blankets 13 Mexican cities. Here’s what the system includes:

• 10,000 surveillance cameras (4,800 fixed, 3,065 pan-tilt-zoom)
• 1,791 automated license plate readers
• 74 drones with unspecified surveillance payloads
• 40 mobile video surveillance trailers
• 102 highway monitoring arches
• 15 anti-drone systems
• Facial recognition and biometric databases
• 2,000 field tablets for officers to access real-time intel

Each floor of the tower has 140 meters of monitoring screens. It’s being billed as Mexico’s first “C7” center: Command, Computation, Control, Coordination, Citizen Contact, Quality, Communications, and Artificial Intelligence [2].

The system won an award at the 2024 World Police Summit in Dubai for “advanced technology and AI use.” Which tells you who the audience is.

Who Is Grupo Seguritech?

Seguritech started in 1995 as a home alarm company in Mexico City, founded by Shimon and Ariel Picker. Thirty years later, it’s a surveillance conglomerate with at least 31 subsidiaries, 2,200 employees, and 52 active projects across 26 Mexican states [1].

The numbers are staggering. Since 2012, the company has landed at least 63 government surveillance contracts worth 21.8 billion pesos ($1.27 billion USD). It has built or manages 188 command centers throughout Mexico. In a country where the security technology market is worth $1.8 billion annually, Seguritech is the dominant player [1].

In 2018, a former member of the Mexican Congress accused the company of holding a “monopoly” over the surveillance industry and requested an attorney general investigation [1].

The company’s reach extends beyond Mexico. Seguritech Colombia S.A.S. was established in 2017 and signed a $14.4 million highway surveillance contract in 2021. Seguritech Brasil launched in 2020. And in 2025, the company registered two new entities in the United States: Seguritech & Condor Solutions LLC in Texas and Seguritech International LLC in Delaware [1].

The Texas Deal

In April 2022, Chihuahua Governor María Eugenia Campos Galván and Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a memorandum of understanding. Campos offered Abbott something unprecedented: direct access to Chihuahua’s surveillance data [3].

“We are willing to share that information with Texas State authorities and commercial partners directly,” Campos wrote in the memorandum obtained by the Texas Observer [3].

Abbott called it “the best border security plan that I’ve seen from any governor from Mexico” [3].

The data doesn’t stop in Austin. Mexican officials confirmed that Plataforma Centinela data is shared with five US federal agencies [1]:

• US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
• Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

The plan includes embedding Texas and federal law enforcement physically inside the tower for intelligence-sharing operations [3]. Chihuahua’s public safety secretary said Texas officials won’t get direct login access (“they’ll have access through us”), but that’s a policy choice, not a technical limitation [3].

The system can already track vehicles from the moment they leave an industrial park in Juárez until they cross the border into Texas. In January 2025, El Paso police used Centinela’s license plate reader database to recover a stolen SUV [3].

The Track Record Nobody Wants to Talk About

Seguritech’s contracts have a pattern. A joint investigation by Rest of World and Type Investigations reviewed thousands of pages of public records and found repeated problems [1]:

Tres10 (subsidiary): Won a $220 million Tamaulipas contract in 2019 to build a command center in Reynosa. An investigation launched in 2024 found “financial and legal irregularities” [1].

B3 Fly Services (subsidiary): Secured a 1.2 billion peso ($59 million) helicopter and aircraft rental contract in Michoacán in 2015. Auditors found “irregularities difficult to explain” [1].

SPE Michoacán Seguro: A $35 million command center contract from 2019 was canceled after the company failed to deliver promised materials [1].

Customs contract: Terminated in 2025 for “excessive costs” [1].

And then there’s the Guanajuato situation. In 2025, a former governor was linked to an expensive Texas home registered to a former Seguritech executive, a possible quid pro quo after a state surveillance contract. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said publicly: “This needs to be cleared up. If that is proven to be true, well, that is corruption.” The investigation was closed in January 2026 by the current state government (same party), which found “no conflict of interest” [1].

The EFF reported an even more damning stat: in five out of six states where Seguritech installed surveillance systems, the annual crime rate went up between 11% and 85%. In Sinaloa, only 17% of Seguritech’s cameras were functional when the contract ended [2].

Classified for Five Years

How much did Torre Centinela actually cost? Nobody outside the Chihuahua state government knows. The cost has been classified [2].

The state government designated most information about the project as secret. Dozens of public records requests have gone unanswered. The Chihuahua State Congress rejected proposals to declassify documents and blocked audit attempts [2].

The investigation by Rest of World sent records requests to all 32 Mexican states and nine federal entities. Nine states rejected the requests outright, citing national security or ongoing investigations [1].

Texas isn’t any more transparent. The Texas Department of Public Safety withheld all records related to Centinela, citing exemptions for “threat assessments shared between various state and federal law enforcement partners” [3].

We know the Plataforma Centinela system costs roughly $200 million, with quarterly payments. And here’s a detail that should raise eyebrows: Seguritech retains ownership of the tower and all its assets until August 2027 [2]. A private foreign company owns the surveillance infrastructure watching the US border.

Why This Matters for Americans

The usual argument for border surveillance is that it targets cartel activity. But surveillance systems don’t discriminate. Plataforma Centinela’s facial recognition can identify anyone in its database: Mexican citizens, American visitors crossing into Juárez, migrants, journalists, human rights workers.

Santiago Narváez, a researcher at R3D (the Network in Defense of Digital Rights), put it bluntly: “They are systems that do not seem to have much of an impact in the reduction of crime nor criminal investigations. And on the other hand, they have a huge impact on people’s privacy” [1].

The risks are specific:

• ICE gets the data. In the current enforcement climate (where ICE is conducting operations at courthouses, protests, and anywhere else), Mexican surveillance data feeding into US immigration enforcement is a direct pipeline for deportation targeting.
• Cartel infiltration. Mexico has a documented history of surveillance data ending up with criminal organizations. In 2014, police surveillance data from Guerrero was allegedly shared with criminal groups involved in the disappearance of 43 students [1].
• No oversight. The data-sharing agreement between Texas and Chihuahua exists in a legal gray zone. It’s not subject to US Fourth Amendment protections because the collection happens on foreign soil. And Mexico’s oversight of Seguritech is functionally nonexistent.
• Private ownership. Seguritech owns the infrastructure until 2027. A private company with corruption allegations in multiple states controls the cameras, the data, and the access.

Ana Gaitán of the Network in Defense of Digital Rights stressed that identifying “who the suppliers of these tools are can give a clearer picture of how the market functions”, and who’s accountable when it goes wrong [1].

Seguritech Is Coming to the US

The company isn’t just feeding data to American agencies. It’s setting up shop in the United States.

In 2025, Seguritech registered two new US entities [1]:

• Seguritech & Condor Solutions LLC (Texas)
• Seguritech International LLC (incorporated in Delaware, operating in Texas)

The companies offer surveillance and security technology, telecommunications, critical infrastructure design, executive travel security in Mexico, and “permit navigation assistance.” That last item is worth noting: a surveillance contractor offering to help clients navigate government permits.

A 2021 Oracle press release also referenced Seguritech operations in Ecuador, China, and Israel, though the company hasn’t confirmed these [1].

What You Can Do

• If you cross the border: know that license plate readers track vehicles from Juárez to the US border. Your crossing is logged, timestamped, and potentially shared with five federal agencies.
• If you’re in the immigration system: data from Mexican surveillance feeds into ICE. Consult an immigration attorney about your exposure.
• Support the EFF and R3D: both organizations are actively investigating Seguritech and pushing for transparency on border surveillance data-sharing.
• Demand transparency from Texas officials: the state has refused all FOIA requests about its Centinela data access. Contact your state representative and demand disclosure of what data Texas receives from foreign surveillance systems.
• Follow the money: Seguritech’s US expansion means it will likely seek American government contracts. Watch for no-bid deals in border states.

References

1. Olivares, José. “A Mexican surveillance giant you’ve never heard of is now watching the US border.” Rest of World & Type Investigations. April 8, 2026. restofworld.org
2. Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The State of Chihuahua Is Building a 20-Story Tower in Ciudad Juarez to Surveil 13 Cities–and Texas Will Also Be Watching.” September 2023. eff.org
3. Texas Observer. “Just Beyond the Texas Border, Chihuahua Is Launching a Burgeoning State Surveillance System.” texasobserver.org
4. Pulitzer Center. “The Eyes of Chihuahua.” pulitzercenter.org
5. VPN Overview. “Planned US-Mexico Border Surveillance Tower Raises Concerns.” vpnoverview.com

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