Editor’s Note: This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and Under the Volcano, an annual binational writing residency in Tepoztlán, Morelos.
For three years, Luis Mendoza has periodically gone to the same construction site in downtown Ciudad Juárez to check on the progress of a 20-story tower that will serve as the home base of a vast state surveillance project.
On one visit in early May, Mendoza, a 37-year-old activist with the Juárez group El Frente Político Ciudadano para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (Citizens’ Political Front in Defense of Human Rights), was confronted by a company representative overseeing the project and a police officer and asked to leave.
