The Border Chronicle Turns Five. What’s Next?

Founders Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller join editor and reporter Caroline Tracey to revisit the newsroom’s beginnings and the stories that have defined it, and to celebrate its next chapter.

It’s The Border Chronicle’s fifth anniversary! Founders Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller join Caroline Tracey, our reporter and editor for the environment and arts and culture, for a look back at the beginnings of this small but mighty outlet, which got its start on Substack in September 2021. Five years later, we’ve moved to an independent publishing platform and have eight people on our team! Now we’re transitioning to become a nonprofit newsroom so that we can provide more in-depth journalism across the southern border.

On this podcast episode, we talk about why the U.S.-Mexico border needs a regional publication, what stories we’ve been focused on during this tumultuous era, and what the future holds for The Border Chronicle’s reporting and issues impacting the border.

Finally, if you’re in Tucson or nearby on October 22, join our fifth-anniversary party at La Indita, one of the city’s best restaurants, from 6 to 9 p.m.! More details to come soon!

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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.

Todd Miller is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of The Border Chronicle. He is the author of four books that examine border militarization and its externalization, surveillance technology and industry, climate change, and the search for alternatives. His books include Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021) Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019),  Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014).

Todd’s forthcoming book is a deep examination of water as a border issue in an age of climate-induced heat waves and drought. It will be published by Seven Stories Press in 2027.

Besides The Border Chronicle, articles by Todd have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, TomDispatch, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. He has also authored and co-authored reports on border surveillance, the border industrial complex, and climate change for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, where he is a fellow.

Todd’s book Storming the Wall received the Izzy Award in 2018 for “path-breaking and in-depth reporting.” He also received first place in “Community immigration reporting” by the Arizona Press Club in 2013. Todd has a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Journalism from Prescott College, where he is also an adjunct professor.

In his spare time, Todd likes to travel, read, philosophize, and hang out with his two kids—whether it be going to a dance recital or being a basketball coach.

Comments (3)
  1. Happy Anniversary and many more to come!

  2. Happy anniversary!

    • Thank you, Ed!

Comments are closed.

Join us for our 5 Year Anniversary Party October 22nd  →

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