The Border Chronicle

Trump Wants to ‘Take Over’ Elections. These States Are Prime Targets.

Trump Wants to ‘Take Over’ Elections. These States Are Prime Targets. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/u...

Most people don't realize how much of the U.S. immigration detention system is run by private companies and how much money is involved. 🧵

South Texas Fights Back ICE raids and detentions, together with a high-profile killing, have led Rio Grand Valley residents to mobilize—including even some local Republicans.

ICE raids, a covered-up killing, and a family detained after a routine check-in. South Texas is fighting back, across party lines. The Gámez-Cuéllar family was released Monday after community pressure.

Read full story🔗🦂:

CPJ, Free Press lead call for journalist Estefany Rodríguez’s release from ICE detention - Committee to Protect Journalists The Committee to Protect Journalists and Free Press led a coalition of more than 40 press freedom, human rights, and media organizations in a joint statement Tuesday calling for the release of journal...

It is outrageous that Nashville Notacias reporter Estefany Rodriguez was detained and taken out of state because of ICE reporting.

We are proud to join 40 other press freedom, civic and media orgs to call for her immediate release.
cpj.org/2026/03/cpj-...

#PressFreedom
apnews.com/article/repo...

Denouncing Into the Void: The Dismantling of Internal Oversight and Accountability at DHS - WOLA Join the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) for a webinar presenting our new joint report.

March 21 marks 1 year since the admin fired nearly everyone at DHS's oversight offices handling civil rights, detention violations & more.

A year of rising abuses—and far less recourse for victims.

WOLA and Kino Border Initiative are publishing a report and hosting a webinar. Join us Thursday 19:

ICE has made itself so toxic that it can’t use the garish new marked vehicles it purchased for millions of dollars.

The U.S. killed six more civilians in a boat strike in the Pacific Ocean yesterday.

More than 150 people have been slain in these extrajudicial killings since September 2025. @theintercept.com is tracking them all here:

theintercept.com/2025/11/17/t...

Huh. The demise of Camp East Montana may have been announced too soon.

Table 1. DoD Funding for OSG, as of September 30, 2025 | Component | Obligations | Disbursements | |-----------|--------------|---------------| | Army | $29,365,000 | 7,944,000 | | Navy | $8,810,000 | $6,303 ,000 | | Air Force | 22,466,000 | $20,997,000 | | Other DoD | $5,000 | $5,000 | | OSG TOTAL | $60,646,000 | $35,249,000 | Source: OUSD(C), response to DoD OIG request for information, 26.1 OSG 028, 1/20/2026. Table 2. DHS Funding for Operations at NSGB, as of December 12, 2025 | Utilities | $127,929.57 | |-------------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Base Operating Services | $57,308.87 | | Performance Assessment Representative Fee | $5,678.14 | | ICE Gitmo Management Operations Center Contract | $17,658,947.12 | | TOTAL | $17,849,863.70 | Note: Cost estimates are based on the full contract. Source: DHS, response to DoD OIG request for information, 26.1 OSG 010, 1/12/2026.

It cost a combined $53,098,863.70 to detain 708 migrants at Guantánamo in 2025.

That's $74,998.40 per person—for an average stay of 14 days.

Source: Defense Department IG report at www.dodig.mil/reports.html...

The Border Chronicle Weekly Roundup: March 6 Buh Bye Kristi Noem, and who the heck is Markwayne Mullin? Trump's new pick for DHS secretary. Plus, an epic novel about the U.S. and Mexico's joint erasure of Apachería, and historian and author Lydi...

Kristi Noem is out. Markwayne Mullin is in. Measles at an El Paso ICE camp. Border Patrol targeting legal immigrants in AZ. Plus a new epic novel on the erasure of Apachería. This week's border news, all in one place.

Read full Weekly Roundup 🔗🦂:

The first Trump admin had five DHS secretaries. So you can bet this is only the beginning of the revolving door.

SOUTHCOM refused to provide additional information about the attack in Ecuador, including whether the strikes added to the more than 150 civilians killed in U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific since September.

Telling the Stories of Urban Change in the Borderlands Historian and writer Lydia Otero on growing up in the borderlands, Tucson's racial and urban history, and their most recent book, Storied Property: María Cordova's Casa.

New podcast episode 🎙️
Historian Lydia Otero on growing up in Tucson, watching La Calle disappear to freeways & urban renewal, and becoming the person to tell those stories. Their new book, Storied Property: María Cordova's Casa.
Listen using the link below 🦂🔗

The Borderlands’ Lost Third Country Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue’s new novel, Now I Surrender, is an epic about the U.S. and Mexico’s joint erasure of Apachería.

Before the U.S.-Mexico border, there was a third country: Apachería. Álvaro Enrigue's new novel Now I Surrender recovers the history both nations erased.

Read full review🦂🔗:

DHS admits it deported more than 80 DACA recipients “Dreamers” who came to the U.S. as children are protected under U.S. law, so deportations of them are unusual.

www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

The Border Chronicle Weekly Roundup: February 27 A protest against the buoy barrier in the RGV, a tense situation with military at the end of the wall in Arizona, and deported vets seek justice.

👋 It’s Friday, and our Weekly Round is here! Do not miss out on this week’s border stories. 🏜️

To read the full roundup, click below🔗🦂:

At the End of the Wall: A Reporter’s Notebook Walking from a blasted mountain top--a planned site for new border wall construction--to a makeshift military camp along the border in a remote part of southern Arizona led to a tense yet revelatory m...

Where Arizona's border wall ends, soldiers readied rifles as humanitarian aid workers approached. Reporter Todd Miller joined the Samaritans near Sycamore Canyon , a wilderness slated for $613M in new wall construction.
Read the full story🦂🔗:

The stories in here of what DHS officers are doing to children who are still making the journey to the southern border to seek protection is appalling. One teenager says he was threatened with "a dog and a stun gun" into signing away his right to seek protection in the United States

On Deported Veterans and Life after Deportation: A Q&A with Robert Vivar "I understand what people are going through because I lived it myself."

Deported veterans arrive in Tijuana with almost nothing. Robert Vivar, himself deported for nearly a decade, helps them rebuild. "I understand what people are going through because I lived it myself." Full Q&A🔗🦂:

Press Release - Bridge Abrazo 2.21.2026 MEDIA ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Feb 21, 2026 MEDIA CONTACTS: Tannya Benavides | 956-251-8694 | tbenavides1205@gmail.com Edgar Villasenor | 956-757-3428 | edgar@rgisc.org BREAKING: During ...

🚨During international “Abrazo” ceremony on the border, community members from sister cities Laredo and Nuevo Laredo deploy giant banners on both sides of Rio Grande declaring: “NO BORDER WALL!”

Read more below🔗:

The Border Chronicle Weekly Roundup: February 20 This week's collaboration exposes growing surveillance at the Arizona border, a poet comes to terms with guns and masculinity in Tombstone, and the border comes to Tennessee.

🗣️Weekly Roundup is here! This week's collaboration exposes growing surveillance at the Arizona border, a poet comes to terms with guns and masculinity in Tombstone, and the border comes to Tennessee.

For full roundup🦂🗞️:

“From hidden license plate readers to AI-powered cameras, federal agents have built a vast monitoring network that stretches deep into Arizona.” www.theborderchronicle.com/hidden-in-pl... @theborderchronicle.bsky.social

Two issues I'm pondering. One is that you can't move this many people without inflicting tremendous physical and psychological harm on those deported and on society itself. The second is that left in place for years, mass detention on a whole new level will be normalized. It rarely vanishes. [1/3]

“For years, there has been an influx of surveillance technology in and around the communities on the Tohono O’odham Nation, including 10 integrated fixed towers, the backbone of CBP’s virtual wall.

And now there is a new layer of enforcement.”

Hidden in Plain Sight: Surveillance at the Arizona Border From hidden license plate readers to AI-powered cameras, federal agents have built a vast monitoring network that stretches deep into Arizona.

Hidden in traffic cones & highway signs: CBP & DEA have built a covert license plate reader network across Arizona, some 130+ miles from the border, scanning every car on Tohono O'odham land.

Read full story🔗🦂:

The U.S. killed 11 more civilians in boat strikes yesterday -- 8 in the Pacific Ocean and 3 in the Caribbean.

We're tracking the increasing toll of these extrajudicial killings in a tracker @theintercept.com

theintercept.com/2025/11/17/t...

Don’t Let Boat Strikes Fade Into the Background - WOLA The increasing normalization of the U.S. government's illegal boat strikes poses dangers: justifications could extend to other victims in other contexts, and elements of the U.S. military appear to be...

3 more attacks yesterday. 11 dead. Feb is on track to be the 3rd-deadliest month of illegal US boat strikes. We must never normalize this, warns WOLA’s latest podcast with drug policy director John Walsh.

Extrajud. executions per 7 days:
Sep: 4.0
Oct: 10.4
Nov: 4.9
Dec: 9.0
Jan: 0.7
Feb (1-16): 7.9

“The ban forces nine sheriff’s offices in the state to immediately sever agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — including the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office, which had one of the nation’s longest-running 287(g) agreements.”

Gunfights Gunfights Gunfights Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his childhoo...

Interview out today with @cetracey.bsky.social for @theborderchronicle.bsky.social. I'm always grateful for a thoughtful interview with someone who has given the work a close read.

Listen here:

www.theborderchronicle.com/gunfights-gu...

Gunfights Gunfights Gunfights Poet Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, Arizona—a town best known for Old West-themed gunfight tourism. In his new book, Reckon, Phillips explores his relationship to the unusual setting of his chi...

What does it mean to grow up where the Wild West is a daily tourist show? Poet Logan Phillips was born in Tombstone, AZ. His new book Reckon explores masculinity, myth & memory. New podcast episode out now.

Listen to the full podcast episode🔗🦂: