The Border Chronicle Weekly Roundup: May 15

The Trump Administration is destroying sacred sites for more border wall, a podcast on a new investigation into the massive surveillance tower opening in Ciudad Juárez, plus more events and news from the borderlands.

A big thanks to everyone who answered our call for support this week! We are a reader-supported publication and couldn’t do this work without you! Your support and words of encouragement mean a lot. So thank you again! And if you haven’t become a paid subscriber yet, sign up today for just $59 a year or $250 as a sustaining member and receive some of our brand new merch. Every bit of your paid subscription will go back into our reporting at the U.S.-Mexico border.

This Week in The Border Chronicle:

Community Events:

If you’re in Southern Arizona on May 16, you can camp out under the stars and learn more about the border wall’s environmental and wildlife impacts, and meet new friends (or old ones). Also, camping is optional!

Volunteer opportunity

This April and May, you can volunteer to document plants and wildlife on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in the Border BioBlitz a community science effort to record as many species as possible 15 kilometers north or south of the international border. Check out this press release from the San Diego Natural History Museum to learn more.

More News from Across the Border Region:

Las Cruces Diocese fights federal effort to seize Mount Cristo Rey property for border wall Source NM

Medical Examiner confirms Haitian asylum seeker died from untreated tooth infection in Az detention Tucson Sentinel

Tucson’s Queer Immigrant Rights Networks Grow Amid Fear, Resistance and Raids LOOKOUT

US rejects UN migration forum declaration, State Department says Reuters

Texas took their licenses. Now these immigrant truckers face lost livelihoods, sense of betrayal Texas Tribune

Author

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.