It’s democracy vs. fascism in the most consequential election of our lifetime. We talk about its implications for border communities. Also, Todd talks about his latest reporting from Mexico, where migrants are continually being sent back to the country’s southern border, creating a cycle of futility and suffering. Melissa recalls reporting on Trump…

On September 7, we had the honor of leading a discussion with Celia Concannon and Gustavo Lozano, two longtime residents and educators from ambos Nogales, who have spent years teaching music and theater in local schools. We then had a Q&A with audience members, which you’ll hear at the end. The event was held downtown in Nogales, Arizona, on Morley…

Immigrant detention has doubled during Biden, which now wants to expand it more. But not if rights groups can help it, explains the senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center. Since Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, there have been alarming trends in detentions and deportations undertaken by Immigration and Customs Enfo…

For several years, author and journalist Jessica Pishko has investigated the power of right-wing sheriffs and their impact on democracy, elections, and border and immigration policy. Her new book, out this month, The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, is a must-read, especially during our most conseque…

Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson’s story gives us a compelling, personal, and geopolitical glimpse into the borderlands across a history of militarization, resistance, and transformation. How does one go from a U.S. Special Forces Green Beret in El Salvador to doing humanitarian aid work on the border? This is where Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson begins this…

Luis Chaparro is a longtime border journalist from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. He specializes in reporting on criminal organizations, corruption, and binational affairs. He’s written for many publications in Mexico and the United States. And he’s one of the only journalists in the borderlands who consistently reports on and analyzes organized crime in M…

Take a ride on the electoral rollercoaster--and how it impacts the border and U.S.-Mexico relations--with one of the most insightful historians out there. It’s been a while, Border Chronicle readers and listeners. Since we took our annual July break, the U.S. political landscape has shifted considerably. At least partly because of this, we will tak…

In her classic utopian science fiction novel The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to unbuild walls.” Author Silky Shah has framed an entire book around that quote, and Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition c…

In June, President Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The new restriction was supported by many prominent newspaper columnists—few of whom offered alternative solutions or examined the order’s impact on human rights, says Adam Isacson, a longtime expert on Latin America and U.S. immigration policy. “The Bi…

If you want to learn about border technology, listen to this conversation about a new book on surviving migration in the age of artificial intelligence. Last week I attended the 17th annual Border Security Expo in El Paso, Texas, which focused on border enforcement technology. I mention this because I can’t think of a better person to talk to about…

It’s tough enough to get Americans to realize that if Donald Trump wins in November, it would most likely mean the end of representative democracy in the United States. Even tougher, however, is to make Americans aware that even if Trump doesn’t win, many authoritarian policy changes are already being rolled out in states like Texas and Alabama. So…

A defining issue of this century will be people on the move and where they settle. Wealthier countries like the U.S. are responding by walling themselves off from the rest of the world and investing in deterrence and detention, which only contributes to more deaths and misery while providing no long-term solutions. There must be a better way. This …

Water, climate change, and the right-wing disinformation ecosystem...The Border Chronicle founders discuss what should be on everyone's radar when we talk about the borderlands this presidential election season. Read or listen to more of The Border Chronicle at www.theborderchronicle.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/…

Join us for an illuminating conversation about borders, belonging, myths, and oracles. She warns, “What we have created is a ruinous map for a ruinous future.” I was so happy to get a chance to talk with writer, author, and journalist Lauren Markham about her insightful and page-turning new book A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. In t…

In January, the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity confirmed an exciting discovery near the Arizona-Mexico border: the first sighting of a jaguar never previously identified in Arizona. Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate at the center, has been tracking the jaguar population in the borderlands for several years. The rare a…

As widespread election border theater kicks in, the director of the Surveillance Resistance Lab talks about smart borders, border externalization, “identity dominance,” and what can be done about it. Well, this week has been a doozy on the U.S.-Mexico border. There is the continued Texas standoff between the federal government and Operation Lonesta…

How did right-wing media hijack the narrative around the U.S.-Mexico border? You’ve probably heard the terms “military age men,” “invasion,” and “Biden’s open borders” bandied about in the media and among congressional leaders. These deliberately dehumanizing terms have shaped the way Americans view the U.S.-Mexico border as the 2024 election seaso…

Al Otro Lado's executive director discusses what’s to come this election year: more of the CBP One app and open-air border prisons, along with a hyper-distorted fearmongering narrative of overwhelm. So, dear listeners, it is time to continue preparing ourselves for 2024 (check out Melissa’s Tuesday piece). As we know, during an election year the bo…

It’s been almost a year since the U.S. government rolled out the CBPOne app, which was meant to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. But a historic number of people continue to arrive. In Lukeville, Arizona, people from all over the world line up to be processed by Border Patrol with the aim of applying for asylum, whil…

The co-founder of the Sidewalk School, which provides services to asylum seeking families in Mexico's migrant camps, talks about racism and Black migration, border disinformation, and how governments could alleviate suffering at the border. Check out more local border journalism at theborderchronicle.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters…

“It’s not difficult to understand that a population that makes its livelihood off the land would find climate change oppressive, and would find climate change to be tantamount to persecution.” All signs indicate that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, yet again. If this sounds like something you’ve heard before, it is. Every year it seems lik…

Muzzafar Chishti, a lawyer, is a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and director of MPI’s office at New York University School of Law. He specializes in immigration policy and has spent years researching and writing about the United States’ outdated asylum system, which he says is “built on a 1952 architecture.” Chish…

The legendary storyteller takes us on a trip through the Arizona borderlands, its sky islands, flora and fauna, all the way to the border wall with Mexico. “The borderlands are beautiful.” That’s how Petey Mesquitey always ends his weekly show Growing Native on the Tucson community radio station KXCI. And that was my first question to Petey in this…

Recorded at the Tin Shed Theater with the wonderful people of Patagonia, Arizona, we talk about Taylor's fascinating career as an educator and artist who challenges our perceptions of borders. David Taylor is a visual artist who works with drone footage, photography, and other art forms to question our sense of place, territory, history, and politi…

Roberto Lopez, born and raised in South Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, leads the Texas Civil Rights Project’s Beyond Borders Program, which works to defend the civil and human rights of border communities and of the people migrating through the borderlands. Inspired by the United Farm Workers movement, the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project was found…

The lawyer and longtime community organizer talks about her two-year ban from practicing immigration law, how she is responding to it, and her history of border organizing and advocacy in Arizona. In July the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered that prominent federal immigration lawyer and longtime community organizer Margo Cowan be barred for two…

Why do people keep risking their lives in the Darién? Caitlyn Yates, a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of British Columbia, has spent years researching this question. Yates has been traveling to the Darién Gap since 2018 to document changes in the region and interview hundreds of people who have chosen to take the risky…

“The mass shooting of August 3, 2019, demands a reckoning. It must be situated in a recent and vicious amplification of preexisting U.S. border and immigration policy.” On August 3, 2019, a mass shooting took place in El Paso, Texas. After hearing reports of the shooting, anthropologist Gilberto Rosas tried to call his parents, who live in El Paso,…

Alejandra Spector is a practicing psychotherapist and licensed master social worker, from El Paso, Texas. Spector, who now lives in Austin, grew up in a bilingual family of border activists. Her father, Carlos Spector, is a well-known asylum and human rights lawyer, and her mother, Sandra Spector, is a longtime community organizer who runs the fami…

Tohono O’odham leader Amy Juan describes the May 18 killing of Raymond Mattia and the long context of border militarization that led to it. On May 18, Raymond Mattia stepped out of his house after he saw the U.S. Border Patrol arrive. He lived in the small community of Ali Chuk (also known as Menagers Dam), located about one mile from the U.S.-Mexi…

In 2020, Dr. Alexander Tenorio, a neurosurgeon based in San Diego, noticed a sharp increase in people suffering traumatic brain and spinal injuries. These cases, he soon discovered, were the result of people falling from the newly expanded and elevated border wall. Under the Trump administration, the border wall’s height was raised to 30 feet, whic…

For the first time in the history of The Border Chronicle, Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller have done a podcast together. Don’t worry, it comes with the requisite banter, especially at the beginning. But the brunt of the conversation is a deep dive into Melissa’s chilling, page-turning article in The New Yorker, “A Covert Mission to Solve a Mexic…

Texas is once again in the throes of its biennial legislative session, which will wrap up at the end of May. One of the more dangerously authoritarian bills introduced this session is HB 20, authored by Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), which would create armed citizen militias under the control of the governor. Their mission would be to hunt down undocumen…

An in-depth conversation with the Sikh musician and educator about growing up as a child of immigrants and turning to music for solace and inspiration. Launching from last week’s Q&A with Sonny Singh, a Sikh musician and educator, we delve into his role in the film From Here, an eloquent and moving documentary that follows the stories of four child…

The U.S. government is doubling down and expanding its surveillance technology in border communities. But many residents don’t know the extent to which they’re being watched, given that the government rarely seeks their input. This month, the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation released new data and an interactive map of surveillance towers, w…

With media coverage shrinking, this two-person news bureau based in Hermosillo, Sonora, fills a vital role informing U.S. audiences about Mexico. https://www.theborderchronicle.com/p/the-importance-of-cross-border-journalism#details --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support…

In 2019, former President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the border, making border wall construction a top priority. Some of that wall was slated for the city of Laredo, Texas. Tricia Cortez, Executive Director of the nonprofit Rio Grande International Study Center, based in Laredo, talks about her community’s “David vs. Goliath” bat…

Twenty years ago, Maasai leader Meitamei Olol Dapash snuck across the Kenya-Tanzania border to report on what the Otterlo Business Corporation was doing. In today’s podcast he explains what he saw then: The company was capturing animals, sending them to zoos, and starting a trophy-hunting operation. And now, two decades later, this company wants to…

This is the second part of The Border Chronicle’s conversation with Sheriff David Hathaway of Santa Cruz County, located on the Arizona-Mexico border. Hathaway talks about “fuzzy” border statistics, which can be used to convey anything a person wants, and his battle to take down a U.S. Customs and Border Protection “spy blimp” over the city of Noga…

Sheriff David Hathaway is a fifth-generation rancher from the U.S.-Mexico border in Santa Cruz County, Arizona. He’s also a former supervisory agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and he participated in the DEA’s largest-ever homicide investigation, Operación Leyenda, to track down the killers of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in the 1…

A detailed, intimate, frank (and, be warned, often explicit) conversation with the 'Border Hacker' authors about how they met, why they decided to write a book, and how they are living under threat. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support

How apocalyptic mass fantasies stoked by Hollywood and the media help fuel the border industrial complex. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support

Between the state funded shipping container walls, and the Biden administration “filling in the gaps” of Trump’s border wall, it’s hard to tell what’s going on, exactly. What we do know is that border wall building under the current administration has not stopped, even if the Biden administration calls it something else. Scott Nicol is an artist, e…

An examination of official discourse and the cartel narrative, the national security paradigm, and the drug war as a policy of extermination. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support

Dora Rodriguez was once an asylum seeker. She escaped the death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s during the U.S.-backed civil war. On her journey to the United States, her group was abandoned in the Sonoran Desert south of Tucson, Arizona. Thirteen people traveling with her died, and Rodriguez barely survived. Since then, she’s devoted her life t…

“Putting these feelings, these experiences on the page was cathartic," Olivares says about his new book on Trump's Zero Tolerance and its aftermath. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support

Zachary Mueller, political director for the nonprofit America's Voice, traces the history of the GOP's embrace of white supremacy messaging from the 2017 Unite the Right rally to the upcoming midterm elections. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support…

We discuss the history of The Border Chronicle, the environmental impacts of the wall, and how solutions to border woes might be in the flora and fauna before our eyes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support

“The focus on organized crime prevents us from seeing how enforcement and inequality disproportionately targets the poor.” --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support

Jones discusses why the Border Patrol can racially profile people, why it can operate in a 100-mile zone from all U.S. borders, and how it “can look a lot like an authoritarian militia force." --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support