The Border Chronicle Weekly Roundup: August 1

What does security actually mean as billions are funneled into walls and armed agents? And a historian explains the complicated story behind the new binational Tijuana River agreement.

Thank you for joining us in the dog days of summer! Sorry about the last minute reschedule on our live video this morning. We had a changing of the co-host. And Caroline very kindly joined us to talk about her really interesting Q&A this week with Baja California historian Marco Antonio Samaniego on the new binational Tijuana River agreement. What’s happening in your community that The Border Chronicle should cover? Let us know!

This Week in The Border Chronicle:

More News from the Border:

Flooding from the Tijuana River at Border Field State Park in San Diego County in February 2025. (Photo credit: Melissa del Bosque)

2 customs officers plead guilty to allowing drugs to enter the US through their inspection lanes The Associated Press

Trump Wants a New Border Wall. It Would Block a Key Wildlife Corridor. The New York Times

285 acres of Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge taken over by Navy in border security move The Tucson Sentinel

Venezuelan deportees say they endured months of abuse inside a Salvadoran prison The Texas Tribune

International bridges in Valley, border regions seeing fewer crossings MyRGV.com

San Diego County’s Schools Have 27,000 Fewer Students Than a Decade Ago. It Will Get Worse. Voice of San Diego

Rio Grande Valley’s biggest free health clinic event of the year is canceled due to federal cuts The Texas Tribune

Authors

Caroline Tracey covers the environment and arts and culture for The Border Chronicle. She is the author of the book Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History, a blend of environmental reportage and memoir published in March 2026 by W.W. Norton.

Outside of The Border Chronicle, Caroline’s reporting about the US Southwest, Mexico, and the borderlands has appeared in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos. Her literary and art criticism appears in the Nation, the New Republic, and elsewhere, and has been commissioned by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art.

Caroline’s work has received a Fulbright fellowship, the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing, the Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights, a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant, and an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, among other honors. In 2025 she received the inaugural On the Brinck | Places Prize for writing about the Southwest and in 2026 she received a State of the Art prize from Creative Capital. She holds a doctorate in geography from the University of California, Berkeley.

Outside of work, Caroline likes to spend her time reading, swimming, and walking her dog, Sandro.

Melissa del Bosque is Co-founder and Executive Director of The Border Chronicle. Melissa has written about the U.S.-Mexico border since 1998 for various media outlets, including ProPublica, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Texas Observer, and The Intercept.

Her work has been recognized with numerous U.S. and international journalism awards, including a Gabo Award and the Internacional Rey de España de Periodismo award, as the U.S.-Mexico investigations editor for Lighthouse Reports. In 2020, del Bosque received the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award as part of a ProPublica group reporting project “Inside the Border Patrol.” In 2016, she received the Hillman Prize for her investigative feature “Death on Sevenmile Road” about the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2015, del Bosque’s four-part series with The Guardian on migrant deaths in South Texas won an Emmy and a National Magazine Award. 

Del Bosque is also the author of Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty. She has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master’s in Public Health from the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health, and a Bachelor’s in poetry and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

In her spare time, Melissa loves to travel, spend time with her family, and explore the Sonoran Desert.