Please Take Our Survey: Help The Border Chronicle Improve

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Newsletter
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October 23, 2025
Yes, I’ll take the survey!

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been hinting at ambitious plans for growth on the horizon for The Border Chronicle.

We started this outlet in September 2021 after decades of reporting and writing about the U.S.-Mexico border region. We believed that a news outlet was needed that covered the region as a whole, rather than just a city or a state. From the tip of South Texas to the Tijuana–San Diego metroplex, border communities have a lot in common and a lot to share with one another and the rest of the world. As we like to say here at The Border Chronicle, “The border is the future.”

Throughout the Biden administration, we warned that the authoritarian MAGA movement was training National Guard, local law enforcement, and federal agents at the Texas border under the state’s multibillion-dollar Operation Lone Star. Everyone from Donald Trump to Elon Musk visited the Texas border with camera teams in tow, and right-wing media, to promote the idea that the border was under “invasion.” We call this “border theater.”

This authoritarian model has now been unleashed on the interior of the country in places like Chicago and Portland, Oregon, where DHS secretary Kristi Noem, ICE, and other federal agents arrive with their own camera teams, along with right-wing content creators, to create propaganda reels for social media, gaslighting America into believing we need federal troops to target whatever bogeyman they are promoting at the moment.

Unfortunately, we’ve been watching this same bad militarization movie at the border for years. The good news is that border communities have developed ways to fight back, which the rest of the country would be wise to pay attention to now. Melissa talked to several border organizers and wrote about this recently.

As we approach almost a year of Trump back in the White House—honestly, it feels more like 100 years—it’s incredible how many institutions and media outlets have bent the knee to authoritarianism. It’s hard to say what will happen next as we reel from one Trump-induced crisis to another and wade through ever-deepening layers of disinformation, AI slop, and deepfakes produced by his administration.

We are in dangerous and uncharted waters. Reality-based media are under threat. The Border Chronicle wants to meet this moment by staffing up, expanding our coverage, and meeting readers where they are—whether that be on Instagram or YouTube, or in their email inbox. We also want to continue to build a community around The Border Chronicle and provide you with factual, on-the-ground reporting, context, and analysis based on the U.S.-Mexico border from a border perspective.

In the coming weeks, we’ll have more details on our new plans, which will include a fundraiser to hire more reporters. In the meantime, we ask that you fill out our survey to let us know how you think we’re doing so far, how we can improve, and what we can provide more of in 2026 as we revamp The Border Chronicle.

Hearing from you will greatly help us. We launched our Friday news roundup after feedback from readers in our last survey indicated they’d like us to start one. And voilà!

This survey will be short and painless. We promise! Thank you for your time and for supporting The Border Chronicle. We couldn’t do this without you!

Yes, I’ll take the survey!
Authors
Melissa del Bosque

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

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.

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