The Border Chronicle

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Ask an Expert: Timothy Dunn Over the last month, as reported here at The Border Chronicle, we’ve seen an amping up and expansion of the militarization of the border. Needless to say, questions about this abound. What is happening exactly? Are we onto a new phase of border militarization? How is it different from the past? And what should we be concerned about moving forward? Sociologist Timothy Du...

In an in-depth interview for The Border Chronicle , Maria-Elena Giner reflects on her tenure since being ousted last week by the Trump administration as commissioner for one of the most critical federal agencies on the U.S.-Mexico border. The full conversation has been edited for length and clarity. The International Boundary and Water Commission is a binational agency responsible for managing and...

The Trump administration has begun issuing contracts for border wall construction. During the first Trump administration, contractors dynamited mountains and depleted groundwater, including the Quitobaquito, a sacred spring for the Tohono O’odham tribal nation, to produce concrete for the wall. Under the Real ID Act , dozens of laws protecting the environment, endangered species, and clean air and...

What is happening on the border three months into the Trump administration? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here, Border Chronicle founders Melissa and Todd spend the hour discussing just that. Among the topics covered are Stryker armored vehicles deployed in El Paso, including one conducting surveillance from a garbage dump; DHS secretary Kristi Noem recounting an epiphany about a Target st...

Intrepid Border Chronicler, Todd Miller, is attending the two-day Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona. Last year, media were banned from the event but Miller attended anyway. This year, the expo granted access to media only a few days before the event. On Thursday, Miller will have a full write up on the conference, which included Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem...

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On March 12, Todd and Melissa were thrilled to moderate a panel with the distinguished authors: Luis Alberto Urrea and Gary Nabhan . Urrea has written several novels, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America (about his great-aunt Teresita Urrea, known as the Saint of Cabora), as well as the Pulitzer Prize–nominated nonfiction book The Devil’s Highway . Nabhan, an ethnobotanist, ag...

Ask an Expert: Austin Kocher As promised, immigration expert Austin Kocher has answers for some of your most confounding immigration questions. We sent Austin your questions and he chose three of them to answer. We also tried something fun by doing this via video. Thanks so much to our readers who sent in your questions. Every one of them was great! And thanks Austin for taking the time to share y...

David Bier, director of immigration studies for the Cato Institute , a libertarian think tank , goes in depth on what really happened to the U.S. immigration system during President Trump’s first administration and President Biden’s administration. In his January testimony before Congress, Bier noted that more than 30 times the courts found that Trump was enacting immigration policies illegally an...

With Donald Trump, one thing has been constant since he announced his first campaign in 2016: the narrative that migrants are criminals. He says it with confidence and bluster, and he says it every day. But he goes beyond this, according to migration scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández . Not only are migrants criminals, they are an “existential threat”—a threat to the fabric of life, to the...

In 2021 Texas governor Greg Abbott created Operation Lone Star, a state-funded system for immigration enforcement and detention. At a cost of more than $11 billion, the system has deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and state police to the Texas-Mexico border. These deployments have become the backdrop for the MAGA movement’s “invasion” messaging, and they helped Trump regain the White H...

Well, here we are at the beginning of 2025 , and it’s time to continue preparing ourselves for what’s to come (I hope you all saw Melissa’s Tuesday report on the Border Chronicle Forecast for 2025 ). As we know, 2025 has all the makings of a historic year, with a new president taking office and many threats already on the horizon. Luckily, we have with us border expert Erika Pinheiro to break it a...

On Sunday, The Washington Post , El Universal in Mexico, and Lighthouse Reports published “Death and Deterrence in the Rio Grande,” a yearlong investigation on drowning deaths of asylum seekers. As the U.S.-Mexico investigations editor for Lighthouse Reports, I helped collect the data, did reporting, and coordinated the binational investigation. We wanted to examine how border militarization, incl...

In an episode that you’ve surely been waiting for , Melissa and Todd discuss what Trump’s election might mean for the border. This includes addressing the question, What is a “border czar”? The Donald Trump campaign seemed to know, spending the last several months claiming (falsely) that Kamala Harris had held this somewhat imaginary position under Joe Biden. And, then, after the election, it took...

As the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano put it in his book Upside Down: A Primer for a Looking Glass World , the terminology used in mainstream political discourse often describes precisely the opposite of reality. Cut-throat capitalism is free trade. Violence is law and order. Extraction of natural wealth from communities is increasing revenue. So where does “border security” fit in to this?...

It’s democracy vs. fascism in the most consequential election of our lifetime. We talk about its implications for border communities. Also, Todd talks about his latest reporting from Mexico, where migrants are continually being sent back to the country’s southern border, creating a cycle of futility and suffering. Melissa recalls reporting on Trump’s Operation Faithful Patriot, in which Trump set...

On September 7, we had the honor of leading a discussion with Celia Concannon and Gustavo Lozano , two longtime residents and educators from ambos Nogales, who have spent years teaching music and theater in local schools. We then had a Q&A with audience members, which you’ll hear at the end. The event was held downtown in Nogales, Arizona, on Morley Avenue, at the beautiful Wittner Museum , wh...

Since Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021 , there have been alarming trends in detentions and deportations undertaken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC). For instance, the daily number of people detained has gone up 140 percent. Now there are 37,000 people locked up every day, up from 15,000 in 2021. And 90 percent of those...

For several years, author and journalist Jessica Pishko has investigated the power of right-wing sheriffs and their impact on democracy, elections, and border and immigration policy. Her new book, out this month, The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy , is a must-read, especially during our most consequential presidential election in generations. In th...

Hello, cherished readers. In case you missed it, it’s The Border Chronicle’s third anniversary! On Tuesday, we sent out this post celebrating just that. To make this a sustainable endeavor, we need more paid subscribers. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, please consider doing so. We depend on you! The other important thing that we had in Tuesday’s post was a survey that we’re hoping more people co...

Luis Chaparro is a longtime border journalist from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He specializes in reporting on criminal organizations, corruption, and binational affairs. He’s written for many publications in Mexico and the United States. And he’s one of the only journalists in the borderlands who consistently reports on and analyzes organized crime in Mexico. In July, I immediately went to Chaparro’s S...

It’s been a while, Border Chronicle readers and listeners. Since we took our annual July break, the U.S. political landscape has shifted considerably. At least partly because of this, we will take a ride here with historian Alexander Aviña through the electoral landscape, not only the forthcoming U.S. elections post-Trump assassination attempt and Kamala Harris candidacy, but the historic election...

In her classic utopian science fiction novel The Dispossessed , Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to unbuild walls.” Author Silky Shah has framed an entire book around that quote, and Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition couldn’t have come at a better time. As the narrat...

In June, President Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The new restriction was supported by many prominent newspaper columnists—few of whom offered alternative solutions or examined the order’s impact on human rights, says Adam Isacson, a longtime expert on Latin America and U.S. immigration policy. “The Biden administration made a choice to restrict asylu...