Shows
The Border ChronicleWhat Does Security Really Mean? Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller Analyze the First Seven Months of TrumpA discussion about security as U.S. health care gets cut to fund the most gargantuan border enforcement bill ever passed. How do we create a counterforce to this?Why is it that when the word “security” is uttered, all thought and analysis go out the window? This is especially the case when people talk about “border security.” In this podcast, however, Border Chronicle founders Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller put on their thinking caps, analyzing the first seven months of the Trump administration. They crack open the word “security” and examine its interior, hopi...2025-07-3138 min
The Border ChronicleWhat Does Security Really Mean? Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller Analyze the First Seven Months of TrumpWhy is it that when the word “security” is uttered, all thought and analysis go out the window? This is especially the case when people talk about “border security.” In this podcast, however, Border Chronicle founders Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller put on their thinking caps, analyzing the first seven months of the Trump administration. They crack open the word “security” and examine its interior, hoping to better understand it and find a way out of our predicament.The discussion was spurred by the passage of the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which designates $170 billion for border and...2025-07-3138 min
90 Miles from Needles: the Desert Protection PodcastS4E21: Give us a Desert Without BordersEpisode Summary: Chris Clarke unravels the intertwined issues of border politics and desert protection. This episode highlights the human cost of migration through some of the harshest terrains on earth, the Sonoran Desert, while advocating for more humane approaches to immigration and border policies. With a deep dive into recent statistics and personal stories, Clarke paints a moving picture of the realities faced by migrants at the US-Mexico border. The episode also emphasizes the significance of community support in environmental advocacy, underscoring the ongoing efforts to bring the podcast's message to broader audiences, such as the upcoming...2025-07-0431 minThe Border ChronicleClimate, Tech, Borders, and Gaza: A Podcast with Amali TowerA lively conversation about how surveillance tech, created and tested in Israel & the US, targets climate refugees across the world. And how refugees have much better solutions than more of the same.In this episode the executive director of Climate Refugees, Amali Tower, crosses the globe from Israel/Palestine to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to look at the technology that connects the seemingly disparate realities of warfare, surveillance, and immigration raids, putting them in the context of climate change and increasing global displacement. When people arrive to the U.S.-Mexico border, Tower say...2025-06-261h 05The Border ChronicleFrom Seeking Asylum to a Life of Service: Dora Rodriguez on Her New Memoir "A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain."Dora Rodriguez fled the death squads in El Salvador during the civil war. Seeking asylum in the United States in 1980, she nearly died crossing the Sonoran Desert but miraculously survived. She remained in Tucson, Arizona, becoming a social worker and a formidable organizer and advocate for immigrants and for human rights.Her story embodies multitudes, from social justice activist to social worker to mother, grandmother, and founder of Salvavision, an immigrant advocacy organization in Tucson, and cofounder of Casa de la Esperanza, a migrant resource center in Sasabe, Sonora.To this impressive list of accomplishments, Rodri...2025-06-1742 minThe Border ChronicleThe Cost of Being Undocumented: A Podcast with Alix Dick and Antero GarciaAlix Dick arrived in the U.S. more than a decade ago, fleeing violence in Sinaloa, Mexico, that tore her family apart. But the impact of living without legal status in the United States has been almost as brutal as the violence she fled.In her new memoir, The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Woman’s Reckoning with America’s Inhumane Math, cowritten with Stanford University sociology professor Antero Garcia, Alix Dick tallies the costs—spiritual, mental, physical, and economic—of being undocumented in the United States, especially as the Trump administration escalates its cruelty and persecution of people...2025-05-2042 minThe Border ChronicleThe Endangered Rio Grande Can Still Be Saved: A Podcast with Maria-Elena GinerIn an in-depth interview for The Border Chronicle, Maria-Elena Giner reflects on her tenure since being ousted last week by the Trump administration as commissioner for one of the most critical federal agencies on the U.S.-Mexico border. The full conversation has been edited for length and clarity.The International Boundary and Water Commission is a binational agency responsible for managing and enforcing treaties between the U.S. and Mexico that manage water sharing, infrastructure, pollution and other transboundary issues.Last week, Maria-Elena Giner, the U.S. Commissioner for the IBWC abruptly posted a let...2025-04-3024 minThe Border ChronicleNew Border Wall is an 'Ecological Catastrophe': A Podcast with The Sierra Club's Erick MezaThe Trump administration has begun issuing contracts for border wall construction. During the first Trump administration, contractors dynamited mountains and depleted groundwater, including the Quitobaquito, a sacred spring for the Tohono O’odham tribal nation, to produce concrete for the wall. Under the Real ID Act, dozens of laws protecting the environment, endangered species, and clean air and water can be waived for the wall’s construction. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has already begun filing waivers.Earlier this month, Erick Meza, borderlands coordinator for the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter, discovered that one of the sections slated f...2025-04-2936 minThe Border ChronicleState of the Border 100 Days after Trump: A Podcast with Melissa del Bosque and Todd MillerIn a lively conversation, The Border Chronicle founders grapple with the last three months of militarization and surveillance, and ponder what’s to come.What is happening on the border three months into the Trump administration? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here, Border Chroniclefounders Melissa and Todd spend the hour discussing just that.Among the topics covered are Stryker armored vehicles deployed in El Paso, including one conducting surveillance from a garbage dump; DHS secretary Kristi Noem recounting an epiphany about a Target store by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele (this epiph...2025-04-2449 min
The Border ChronicleState of the Border 100 Days after Trump: A Podcast with Melissa del Bosque and Todd MillerWhat is happening on the border three months into the Trump administration? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here, Border Chronicle founders Melissa and Todd spend the hour discussing just that.Among the topics covered are Stryker armored vehicles deployed in El Paso, including one conducting surveillance from a garbage dump; DHS secretary Kristi Noem recounting an epiphany about a Target store by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele (this epiphany helps Bukele justify the 40,000-person capacity “terrorist” prison accepting U.S. deportees); the chilling surveillance tower known as the Torre Centinela looming over Ciudad Juárez; a DOD s...2025-04-2449 minThe Border ChronicleA Live Podcast from Patagonia, Arizona, with Award-Winning Authors Luis Alberto Urrea and Gary NabhanOn March 12, Todd and Melissa were thrilled to moderate a panel with the distinguished authors: Luis Alberto Urrea and Gary Nabhan. Urrea has written several novels, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter and Queen of America (about his great-aunt Teresita Urrea, known as the Saint of Cabora), as well as the Pulitzer Prize–nominated nonfiction book The Devil’s Highway. Nabhan, an ethnobotanist, agricultural ecologist, and Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, is one of the premier writers about the desert borderlands. He spoke about his latest book, Against the American Grain: A Borderlands History of Resistance.Both Urrea and Nabhan offered fascinat...2025-03-271h 39The Border ChronicleMass Deportations Will Tear Our Society Apart: A Q&A with David Bier, Immigration Expert with the Libertarian Cato InstituteDavid Bier, director of immigration studies for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, goes in depth on what really happened to the U.S. immigration system during President Trump’s first administration and President Biden’s administration. In his January testimony before Congress, Bier noted that more than 30 times the courts found that Trump was enacting immigration policies illegally and noted that the “assault on the rule of law was so relentless that many changes were not stopped.” Biden led the immigration system out of an “unprecedented calamity,” Bier said, but often moved too slowly and with lack of focus on refo...2025-03-041h 04The Border ChronicleThe Migrant Criminality Narrative: A Podcast with César Cuauhtémoc García HernándezOne of the nation’s top immigration scholars cuts through the crap and lays bare this moment of border and immigration control, how we got here, and where we’re headed.With Donald Trump, one thing has been constant since he announced his first campaign in 2016: the narrative that migrants are criminals. He says it with confidence and bluster, and he says it every day. But he goes beyond this, according to migration scholar César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández. Not only are migrants criminals, they are an “existential threat”—a threat to the fabric of...2025-02-1351 minThe Border ChronicleWhat Is Texas’s Operation Lone Star, and What Happens If Trump Makes It a National Model? A Podcast with Texas Civil Rights Advocate Bob LibalIn 2021 Texas governor Greg Abbott created Operation Lone Star, a state-funded system for immigration enforcement and detention. At a cost of more than $11 billion, the system has deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and state police to the Texas-Mexico border. These deployments have become the backdrop for the MAGA movement’s “invasion” messaging, and they helped Trump regain the White House. Now Trump is saying he will make Operation Lone Star a model for his national immigration policy.
Texas-based civil rights advocate Bob Libal, an U.S. consultant for the international nonprofit Human Rights Watch, has been monitori...2025-02-0451 minThe Border ChronicleWhat’s Gonna Happen on the Border in 2025? A Podcast with Erika PinheiroIf you want to know about what’s to come on the border—what to expect, how it got to this point, and ways to fight back—put everything down right now and give this a listen.
Well, here we are at the beginning of 2025, and it’s time to continue preparing ourselves for what’s to come (I hope you all saw Melissa’s Tuesday report on the Border Chronicle Forecast for 2025). As we know, 2025 has all the makings of a historic year, with a new president taking office and many threats already on the horizo...2025-01-0952 minThe Border ChronicleReporter's Notebook: Melissa Talks About a New Binational Investigation on Border Militarization and Drownings in the Rio GrandeOn Sunday, The Washington Post, El Universal in Mexico, and Lighthouse Reports published “Death and Deterrence in the Rio Grande,” a yearlong investigation on drowning deaths of asylum seekers. As the U.S.-Mexico investigations editor for Lighthouse Reports, I helped collect the data, did reporting, and coordinated the binational investigation.
We wanted to examine how border militarization, including Texas’ Operation Lone Star, contributes to the growing number of drowning deaths in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo.
As a longtime border reporter, I had never encountered a comprehensive, binational investigation of this issue, so a year ago, w...2024-12-1029 minThe Border ChronicleBorder Chronicle Postelection PodcastIn an episode that you’ve surely been waiting for, Melissa and Todd discuss what Trump’s election might mean for the border. This includes addressing the question, What is a “border czar”? The Donald Trump campaign seemed to know, spending the last several months claiming (falsely) that Kamala Harris had held this somewhat imaginary position under Joe Biden. And, then, after the election, it took Trump only a few days to appoint his own border czar, former ICE commissioner Thomas Homan, who might be the first such czar since Alan Bersin in the late 1990s. Melissa talks about Homan’s ba...2024-11-2655 minThe Border ChronicleNo Borders as a Practical Political Project: A Podcast with Nandita SharmaAs the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano put it in his book Upside Down: A Primer for a Looking Glass World, the terminology used in mainstream political discourse often describes precisely the opposite of reality. Cut-throat capitalism is free trade. Violence is law and order. Extraction of natural wealth from communities is increasing revenue.
So where does “border security” fit in to this? Part of the answer is that borders do not produce security but subordination. This point has been made for two decades now by sociologist Nandita Sharma (see the essay “Why No Borders?,” which she cowrote with...2024-11-2146 minThe Border ChronicleA Special Border Chronicle Election PodcastIt’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’s Operation Faithful Patriot, in which Trump set up military camps at the U.S. southern border before the 2018 midterm election. He also used special Border Patrol teams to kidnap protesters in Portland, Oregon. If he’s elected, it will be much worse this time.
We...2024-10-2947 minThe Border ChronicleA Live Podcast from Nogales with Educators Celia Concannon and Gustavo LozanoOn 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 Avenue, at the beautiful Wittner Museum, which is brimming with amazing, whimsical paintings by Paula Wittner, who lives in nearby Patagonia.
The event kicked off an exciting new oral history project called “The Border Before,” which aims to elev...2024-10-081h 37The Border ChronicleThe Expanding Immigrant Detention Nexus: A Podcast with Jesse FranzblauImmigrant 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 Enforcement (ICE), according to the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC). For instance, the daily number of people detained has gone up 140 percent. Now there are 37,000 people locked up every day, up from 15,000 in 2021. And 90 percent of those people have been held in d...2024-10-0349 minThe Border ChronicleThe Highest Law in the Land: Journalist Jessica Pishko on Right-wing Sheriffs and DemocracyFor 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 consequential presidential election in generations. In this podcast, Pishko talks about her new book, the right-wing constitutional sheriff’s movement, and how it was founded. And she talks about why this is important to border communities: because sheriffs in this movement have embraced far-right milit...2024-09-2444 minThe Border ChronicleFrom Green Beret to Border Human Rights Activist: A Podcast with Mike Wilson and José Antonio LuceroTohono 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 podcast conversation, with a profound and personal story of transformation. It happened at the height of the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in 1989, when Wilson accepted an invitation to eat dinner at a family’s house in Sosonate...2024-09-0557 minThe Border ChronicleBeyond 'El Mayo' and Drug Cartels: A Podcast with Journalist Luis ChaparroLuis 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 Mexico. In July, I immediately went to Chaparro’s Substack newsletter, Saga, when the big news hit that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, notorious leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, had touched down at a small airport in Santa Te...2024-08-2857 minThe Border ChronicleWhat to Make of the U.S. and Mexican Elections: A Podcast with Alexander AviñaTake 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 take a ride here with historian Alexander Aviña through the electoral landscape, not only the forthcoming U.S. elections post-Trump assassination attempt and Kamala Harris candidacy, but the historic election of Claudia Sheinbaum in June, Mexico’s f...2024-08-0854 minThe Border ChronicleUnbuild Walls: A Podcast with Silky ShahIn 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 couldn’t have come at a better time. As the narratives about border and immigration continue to deteriorate with the election rhetoric, the longtime director of the Detention Watch Network talks withThe Border Chronicle about defying this inhumane status quo.
Read or list...2024-07-0253 minThe Border ChronicleFix the Asylum System, Protect Human Rights: A Podcast with Adam IsacsonIn 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 Biden administration made a choice to restrict asylum at the border,” he says, “instead of adding asylum judges and officers to fix the asylum system.”
In this podcast, we discuss solutions to fix the asylum system, and Isacson shares insights from a recent trip t...2024-06-2540 minThe Border ChronicleThe Walls Have Eyes: A Podcast with Petra MolnarIf 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 this than anthropologist and lawyer Petra Molnar, whose new book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, is hot off the presses. I’ve been awaiting this book for years...2024-05-3145 minThe Border ChronicleOn a Far-Right Movement Beyond Trump: A podcast with Heidi BeirichIt’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 says Heidi Beirich, an expert on far-right movements in the United States and Europe. Leading the charge, Beirich says, is the Heritage Foundation, a longtime conservative think tank that has steered to the extreme right in recent years. In Ap...2024-05-2234 minThe Border ChronicleThe Case for Open Borders: A Podcast with John WashingtonA 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 was John Washington’s thought as he launched his latest book project, The Case for Open Borders, which takes a deep dive into more humane responses to global migration and examines the history of borders and nation-states, whi...2024-04-3045 minThe Border ChronicleWhat's Missing in the National Debate About the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Podcast with Melissa and ToddWater, 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
2024-03-2650 minThe Border ChronicleA Map of Future Ruins: A Podcast with Lauren MarkhamJoin 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 this conversation we take a journey through the layers of this book starting with a deadly 2020 fire at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos in Greece, we talk about borders and border...2024-03-2243 minThe Border ChronicleJaguars and Resilience in the Borderlands: A Podcast with Russ McSpadden of the Center for Biological DiversityIn 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 and elusive creatures once lived throughout the American Southwest. But they’ve nearly disappeared over the past 150 years due to habitat loss and government programs to protect the livestock industry.
For decades, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity has worked to protect jaguars, successfully lobbying fo...2024-02-2736 minThe Border ChronicleThe Everywhere Border: A Podcast with Mizue AizekiAs 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 Lonestar; the “Take Back the Border” convoy (also known as “God’s army”)and their political backers annoying and intimidating border communities such as in Eagle Pass; the failed impeachment of Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; and a shot-down so-called bo...2024-02-0845 minThe Border ChronicleHow the Right Wing Hijacked the Border Narrative: A Podcast with Conservative Media Expert AJ BauerHow 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 season unfolds.
In his research, AJ Bauer focuses on right-wing media and
conservative movements in the United States. We talk about mutual aid movements in New York and Chicago and the trajectory of right-wing media from fringe to mainstream and its domination by the MAGA move...2024-01-3057 minThe Border ChroniclePrepare Yourselves for the 2024 Border Chaos Narrative: A Conversation with Erika PinheiroAl 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 border tends to be a place where distorted narratives flourish on the fertile ground of misinformation, and we can expect plenty of that this year, as border expert Erika Pinheiro tells us in this episode. Some of you certainl...2024-01-1146 minThe Border ChronicleAsylum at the U.S.-Mexico Border has Never Been More Complex: A Podcast with Caitlyn YatesIt’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, while in Matamoros, Mexico, migrants wait for months in camps with no running water or toilets for
an appointment on CBPOne. And in Tijuana, and other border cities, wait lists grow for vu...2023-12-1338 minThe Border ChronicleEducation Instead of Barbed Wire and Walls: A Podcast with Felicia Rangel-SamporanoThe 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
2023-11-2855 minThe Border ChronicleClimate Change Oppression: A Podcast with Amali Tower“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 like records are set, broken, and then broken again in cities, states, countries, and regions across the world. The heat, droughts, floods, and storms are putting pressure on people and their livelihoods, primarily in the Global So...2023-11-161h 00The Border ChronicleReforming Asylum for the 21st Century: A Podcast with Immigration Expert Muzzafar ChishtiMuzzafar 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.”
Chishti discusses how the system could be meaningfully changed, including how Congress could make it both more humane and responsive to the country’s needs.
Check out more of our border journalism at The Border Chronicle.2023-10-3141 minThe Border ChronicleThe Borderlands Are Beautiful: A Podcast with Petey MesquiteyThe 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 interview: Why are the borderlands beautiful?
What follows is the legendary storyteller’s observations from more than 30 years of living in the rural borderlands, what it’s like to walk every morning through diverse biomes, what it’s like t...2023-10-1935 minThe Border ChronicleA Live Podcast with David Taylor, Artist and Border ResearcherRecorded 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 politics. His artwork challenges how we see the increasingly militarized zone that divides the United States and Mexico. His work is provocative, playful, and harrowing all at once.
Taylor, who is also a professor in the College of...2023-10-111h 21The Border ChronicleOn Civil Rights and Operation Lone Star in South Texas: A Podcast with Roberto LopezRoberto 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 founded in 1990.
It has taken a strong stand against the illegality of Texas’s Operation Lone Star.
Beginning in March 2021, Operation Lone Star sanctioned the deployment of National Guard and state police—from Texas and other states—to the Texas-Mexi...2023-09-2641 minThe Border Chronicle“People Need Representation”: A Podcast with Immigration Lawyer Margo CowanThe 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 years from practicing law in immigration court for “violating the rules of professional conduct.” For this week’s podcast interview, The Border Chroniclecaught up with Cowan in her Tucson office to hear her side of the story. This story includes Cowan’s lo...2023-09-1556 minThe Border ChronicleA View from the Darién Gap: A podcast with Caitlyn YatesWhy 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 journey. Her work has especially focused on Black migrants who face some of the worst prejudice and treatment on their journeys north. “They risk being robbed, kidnapped or detained repeatedly, which other
migrants don’t face to the same degree,” says Yat...2023-08-2943 minThe Border ChronicleBorder Fortification and the El Paso Massacre: A Conversation with Gilberto Rosas“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, his hometown. At first, they did not answer the phone. At a Walmart about a mile away from the U.S.-Mexico divide, the shooter was on a white-supremacist rampage that would kill 23 people and wound many others. As Rosas...2023-08-1041 minThe Border ChronicleBorder Fortification and the El Paso Massacre: A Podcast with Gilberto Rosas“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, his hometown. At first, they did not answer the phone. At a Walmart about a mile away from the U.S.-Mexico divide, the shooter was on a white-supremacist rampage that would kill 23 people and wound many others. As Rosas...2023-08-1041 minThe Border ChronicleOn Social Justice and Self Care: A Podcast with Psychotherapist Alejandra SpectorAlejandra 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 family’s law
practice.
Social justice work can be incredibly rewarding. But it can also lead to burn out and take a physical and mental toll. Spector stresses the importance of self-care. “Are you eating enough,
drinking enough water, and getting enough slee...2023-06-2747 minThe Border ChronicleThe Longer Story of the Border Patrol Killing of a Tohono O’odham Man: A Conversation with Amy JuanTohono 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.-Mexico international boundary on the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona. Mattia had called the Border Patrol a few hours earlier to report people moving through his land. He was about two feet...2023-06-1540 minThe Border ChronicleA Growing Public Health Crisis: A Conversation with Dr. Alexander Tenorio on Border Wall InjuriesIn 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, which has challenged border hospitals and had deadly consequences
for migrants. Falls from the border wall have left many paralyzed or
unable to function independently. Most of the injured are in their 20s
and 30s and are their families’ breadwinners, so the debilitating
inju...2023-05-3027 minThe Border ChronicleInto the Heart of Narcopolitics and Journalism: A Conversation with Melissa del Bosque about a harrowing article she wrote on the murder of Mexican journalist Miroslava BreachFor 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 Mexican Journalist’s Murder,” published in April.
We talk at length about the harrowing story of Miroslava Breach, the Mexican journalist who covered stories that upset the powerful and who, in March 2017, was murdered in the city of Chihuah...2023-05-1148 min
The Border ChronicleInto the Heart of Narcopolitics and Journalism: A Podcast with Melissa del BosqueGreetings from the Border Security Expo in El Paso, Texas. This annual convention brings private industry together with high brass from Customs and Border Protection. It will serve as an interesting backdrop to tonight’s lifting of Title 42 (at 11:59 p.m.). So stay tuned for stories on this in the coming weeks.On May 25, we will be hosting an online discussion forum on water, climate change, and the border. Save the date! We are still talking to potential panelists and determining the exact time, so more details will come soon.Into the Heart of Narcopolitics an...2023-05-1148 minThe Border ChronicleState Sponsored Vigilantism: A Conversation with Bob Libal about Texas Legislation to Create 'Border Protection Units'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 undocumented people. Bob Libal, a longtime immigration and criminal justice reform activist based
in Austin, attended the bill’s hearing on April 13 at the Texas Legislature, where nearly 300 people signed up in opposition. Despite this, at least 52 Republicans in the Texas House ha...2023-04-2537 minThe Border ChronicleAn Anti-Caste Revolution: A Podcast with Sonny SinghAn 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 children of immigrants who confront racism, xenophobia, and an oppressive immigration system with creativity and activism. Sonny is a musician with the band Red Baraat. In 2022 he released a solo album called Chardi Kala—in...2023-04-1531 minThe Border ChronicleMapping Surveillance in Border Communities: A Conversation with Dave MaassThe 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, which are part of the “virtual wall.” Melissa
speaks with Dave Maass, EFF’s director of investigations, about his
organization’s mapping and data project, which tracks the proliferation
of surveillance tech at the southern border.
Contrary to public perception, the majority of...2023-03-2836 minThe Border ChronicleThe Importance of Cross Border Journalism: A Podcast with Kendal Blust and Murphy WoodhouseWith 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
2023-03-2638 minThe Border ChronicleLaredo's Epic Battle Against Federal and State-Funded Border Walls: A Conversation with Tricia CortezIn 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” battle against the Trump administration’s 30-foot wall. Now her community faces a new onslaught of proposed border wall construction by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
For more about the U.S.-Mexico border read The Border Chronicle. 2023-02-2846 minThe Border ChronicleThe Colonial Border in Kenya: Maasai leader Meitamei Olol Dapash gives an on-the-ground look at the mass exodus of people from Tanzania after a violent land grabTwenty 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 expand its business into more land. This has led to attempts by Tanzania to violently evict Maasai communities from their ancestral land.
Last week, I wrote about this ongoing crisis. Here, Meitamei gives a firsthand account of arriving on the scene in...2023-02-1643 minThe Border ChronicleWarrantless Searches, Stops With No Probable Cause Are Un-American: A Conversation With Sheriff David HathawayThis 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 Nogales. He also gets into his opposition to former Arizona governor Doug Ducey’s 10-mile shipping container wall along the border, as well as his support for the protesters who stopped what he calls an “ugly eyesore” of a wall.
You can list...2023-02-1451 minThe Border Chronicle'Did the CIA Smuggle Cocaine? Yes, I Witnessed it Firsthand': A Podcast with Sheriff David Hathaway
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 1980s.
Hathaway’s participation in Camarena’s murder investigation, and his discovery that the CIA was not only smuggling drugs but also involved in Camarena’s death in Mexico, led Hathaway to conclude that America’s war on drugs is a failure, whic...2023-01-3135 minThe Border ChronicleWhen You Have No Country: A Podcast with Axel Kirschner and Levi Vonk, Authors of ‘Border HackerA 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.2023-01-1249 minThe Border ChronicleThe Border Wall at the End of the World: A Podcast with Jenny StümerHow apocalyptic mass fantasies stoked by Hollywood and the media help fuel the border industrial complex.2022-12-0834 minThe Border ChronicleUnder Biden, Border Wall Construction Continues. It's Just Called Something Else: A Podcast With Scott NicolBetween 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, educator and environmentalist in South Texas who has advocated against border wall construction for years and is an expert on the subject. In this Border Chronicle podcast, Nicol talks about the current construction of wall in his community, which is being labeled...2022-11-2925 minThe Border ChronicleThe Making of the Narco Narrative: A Podcast with Oswaldo ZavalaAn examination of official discourse and the cartel narrative, the national security paradigm, and the drug war as a policy of extermination.2022-11-1242 min
Le balado de la ChaireThe Border Chronicle - Keynote AddressMelissa del Bosque and Todd Miller are the border journalists behind The Border Chronicle, a biweekly newsletter producing original, in-depth reporting on issues relating to the US-Mexico border. Their keynote address explores what it means to be a border journalists, what issues are covered by The Border Chronicle and how we can create and strengthen the links between academia and journalism. This keynote address is preceded by an introduction opening the “Border Walls and Borderlands” conference, organized by the Center for Geopolitics of the Raoul Dandurand Chair. Its director and professor at the Royal Military College of Saint-Jean, Élisabe...2022-11-031h 00The Border ChronicleI Was an Asylum Seeker. Now I Help Others: A Podcast with Dora RodriguezDora 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 to social work and to helping migrants in the Sonoran Desert where she nearly perished. In this podcast, Rodriguez talks about the migrant resource center called Casa de la Esperanza which she helped open last year in the Me...2022-10-2534 minThe Border ChronicleA Memoir From the Front Lines of Family Separation: A Podcast with Human Rights Lawyer Efrén Olivares“Putting these feelings, these experiences on the page was cathartic," Olivares says about his new book on Trump's Zero Tolerance and its aftermath.2022-09-2729 minThe Border ChronicleHow to Counter the GOP's White Supremacy Campaign Messaging: A Podcast Interview with Zachary MuellerZachary 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.2022-09-2734 minThe Border ChronicleNature Has No Borders: A Live Podcast with Erick Meza of Sierra Club BorderlandsWe 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.2022-09-241h 26The Border ChronicleChallenging Smuggling Myths on the U.S. Mexico Border: A Podcast with Anthropologist Gabriella Sanchez“The focus on organized crime prevents us from seeing how enforcement and inequality disproportionately targets the poor.”2022-09-0830 minThe Border ChronicleThe Most Dangerous Police Force: A Podcast with Geographer Reece Jones about His New Book on the Border PatrolJones 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."2022-08-1134 min
The Border ChronicleBlack Seminoles in the Borderlands: A Podcast Interview with Windy Goodloe"We're still here and we're very proud of the legacy that has been left to us."2022-06-2938 minThe Border ChronicleBorder Hacker: A Podcast with Levi VonkA rare in-depth look inside a migrant caravan and Mexico’s amped-up border enforcement, along with scathing revelations about humanitarian networks on the Mexican migrant trail.2022-06-1043 minThe Border ChronicleFrom Border Patrol Agent to Immigrant Rights Activist: A Podcast with Jenn BuddBudd's new memoir "Against the Wall" takes an unflinching look at the systemic misogyny and racism in the Border Patrol, and overcoming a childhood of trauma and abuse.2022-05-2553 minThe Border ChronicleClimate Disaster, Displacement, and Divides: A Podcast with Amali Tower“Now more than three times as many people are displaced by climate disasters and extreme weather events than conflict or violence.”2022-05-1735 minThe Border ChronicleActs of Resistance and Faith: An Interview with the Rev. John Fife on Founding the Sanctuary Movement, and the Ongoing Struggle for Human Rights in the Borderlands"Climate change will be the first time we realize that nation states can't solve this problem by themselves."2022-04-1949 minThe Border Chronicle“Lines of Life and Death”: A Podcast with Geographer Joseph Nevins on Global Apartheid and the Right to the WorldLauded border scholar Joseph Nevins dissects the global border apparatus, shows its parallels with South African apartheid, and calls for both freedom of movement and the right to stay home.2022-04-1429 minThe Border ChronicleOn Challenging Racism, and Creating a New Narrative about Border and Immigrant Communities: A Podcast Interview with Linguist Otto Santa AnaOtto Santa Ana, a linguist, once analyzed more than 6,000 of Donald Trump’s tweets, and his political speeches, for a Supreme Court case to defend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program. He’s also parsed the speeches of former Arizona Senator Russell Pearce, who sponsored SB 1070, as evidence for a constitutional and civil rights lawsuit against Pearce’s anti-Latino “show me your papers” legislation.
Listening to so much of Trump’s racist language, Santa Ana says, made him and some of the university students who assisted him in the court case physically ill. “People became physically and...2022-03-2926 minThe Border ChronicleOn the Border Watch List: A Podcast Interview with Erika Pinheiro on the Chilling Impact of SurveillanceAl Otro Lado’s Tijuana-based litigation and policy director examines the border, past, present, and future, through the lens of the invasive and futuristic surveillance apparatus that is already here.2022-03-1036 minThe Border ChronicleI Was a Performer In the "Spectacle" of Border Enforcement: An Interview with Police Expert Eric GaminoThe former South Texas police officer talks about working a “surge” on the Texas-Mexico border, and playing a role in “border theater.”2022-02-2234 minThe Border ChronicleBlockading the Border Bulldozers: Amber Lee Ortega on Hia Ced O'odham ResistanceIn this audio interview Ortega discusses why she chose to face a judge in order to protect a sacred spring on the Arizona-Mexico Border.2022-02-1837 min
The Border ChronicleStanding Up to Armed Militias in the Borderlands: Author Patrick Strickland on Arivaca and Community ResistanceThe author on his new book "The Marauders," the rise of far-right extremism in Europe and the American borderlands and what communities can learn from Arivaca, Arizona.2022-01-2538 min