Author

Michael Gonzalez

Michael Gonzalez is a writer for The Border Chronicle, based in Brownsville, Texas, where he covers issues affecting border residents in the Rio Grande Valley.

He also works as an independent photojournalist covering stories that range from immigration and border topics to environmental issues and politics. Michael has freelanced for various publications such as The Texas Tribune, The Associated Press, NRC, Getty Images, and the European Pressphoto Agency. As a certified drone pilot, he often incorporates aerial imagery into his reporting to provide greater context for stories about the border wall, the Rio Grande, and other issues affecting the Rio Grande Valley.

Outside of work, he enjoys traveling the world with his wife, watching historical documentaries, and printing black-and-white photos in his darkroom.

Michael's Latest Articles

The San Juan Hotel Battle: A Crossroads for Mexican American Civil Rights in the Rio Grande Valley

There is a reckoning with history happening at an old hotel with a horrific past and the RGV's first and only civil rights museum.

Who Pays for Brownsville’s Industrial and Tech Boom?

County leaders say tax abatements attract jobs. But some residents argue the incentives enrich billion-dollar corporations while they shoulder the costs of growth, pollution, strained public resources, and environmental loss.

A Traffic Stop, Three Months in ICE Detention, and a Deportation Order: How Texas’s Immigration Crackdown Is Sweeping Up DACA Recipients

With interior Border Patrol checkpoints to the north, and the border to the south, DACA recipients in border communities feel under threat by multiple layers of law enforcement, from ICE to local police. Nowhere more so than in Texas.

‘This Will Kill People’: Laredo Landowners Fight Wall and Buoy Plan Threatening Flood-Prone Communities

As federal officials fast-track billions in border wall construction and floating buoy barriers, local leaders and residents say they’re in the dark, and fear the worst.

Inside Trump’s Plan to Finish Walling Off the Rio Grande Valley

Even sites once protected by Congress, including a butterfly refuge and a historic church, are slated for fencing funded by the “one big beautiful bill”—while the river itself is transformed by a floating barrier.