This Policy Brief explores how the expansion of AI-enabled surveillance and border-management technologies at the Moroccan-Spanish border coexists with persistent migrant disappearances along routes to Spain, particularly the Atlantic pathway to the Canary Islands. While technological investments have strengthened detection and deterrence, deaths continue to occur in remote maritime and desert environments where recovery and identification remain extremely difficult and often undercounted.

The analysis shows that intensified enforcement does not stop migration but shifts crossings toward more dangerous routes. At the same time, identification systems are largely designed for law-enforcement purposes — tracking smugglers and controlling mobility — rather than for humanitarian outcomes such as tracing missing persons, notifying families, or ensuring dignified post-mortem identification.

Legal, institutional, and technical gaps reinforce this imbalance. In Morocco, limited forensic capacity, fragmented procedures, and administrative barriers hinder identification efforts, while environmental conditions further complicate recovery. As a result, advanced surveillance infrastructures coexist with weak humanitarian mechanisms.

The Brief argues for reorienting digital technologies toward human protection. AI tools, biometric systems, and databases could support search, tracing, and accountability if integrated with civil-society actors, international organisations, and families, and safeguarded by clear data-protection frameworks.

It recommends:

• Rebalancing investments between surveillance and search-and-rescue and identification capacities
• Establishing interoperable cross-border databases for missing migrants with strong privacy protections
• Expanding forensic capacity in Morocco, including systematic DNA collection
• Integrating humanitarian identification tools into migration governance frameworks
• Strengthening cooperation between EU, Spain, Morocco, international organisations, and civil society
• Expanding safe and legal pathways to prevent disappearances