The Border Chronicle Weekly Roundup: September 19

Photographer Eunice Adorno captures Mexico’s aging dams as “monuments to an idea of progress that never arrived.” And Mexico and the US fund “water resiliency” for the Rio Grande, plus more news.

Every Friday, The Border Chronicle hosts a discussion on Substack Live to keep you informed on our latest articles and podcasts, and other important news from across the U.S.-Mexico border region.

This Week in The Border Chronicle:

The entrance to Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park, New Mexico. The Trump administration is proposing a 30-foot border wall through the historic site. (Photo credit: Melissa del Bosque)

More News from the Border:

Canada and Mexico agree to deepen ties amid Trump trade war BBC

60 violations in 50 days: Inside ICE’s giant tent facility at Ft. Bliss The Washington Post

First section of new border wall in Az’s San Rafael Valley visible Monday The Tucson Sentinel

Texas troopers are doubling their salaries under Abbott’s border effort, even as crossings hit new lows Austin American-Statesman

Fort Bliss ‘assessing potential risks’ after city of El Paso deploys Chinese-made drones next to Army post El Paso Matters

South County Report: Democracy Is Dying? Not in National City Voice of San Diego

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.