Reminder: Please join The Border Chronicle Thursday, October 24, for a discussion thread on the U.S. elections and the border.

Join us at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 11 a.m. Mountain, noon Central, 1 p.m. Eastern.

By Melissa del Bosque & Todd Miller

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October 23, 2024

Please join The Border Chronicle on Thursday, October 24, for a discussion thread on the U.S. elections and the border. We welcome all perspectives for what we hope will be a provocative and respectful discussion that I (Todd) will facilitate. We feel that this is something that will be useful to Border Chronicle readers (and ourselves!), especially as the elections—with all their points of contention—are just a couple of weeks away.

So we want you to come and to let it rip with comments, questions, worries, hopes. We anticipate that along with a vibrant conversation, there will be disagreements with this potentially polemic topic, so we encourage a good-faith debate. Anybody who strays from that (by name calling, for example, or worse) will be removed from the conversation. Please join us at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 11 a.m. Mountain, noon Central, 1 p.m. Eastern.

The discussion will be text based, so all you have to do is click the link we’ll send to your inbox on October 24 and type away. If you’re new to discussion threads, it’s a written forum in real time.

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 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.