After stints at the McAllen Monitor and as a Lege staffer, Melissa del Bosque worked at the Texas Observer as a staff writer from 2008 to 2018, chronicling life in border communities, investigating the government’s militarization of the region, and telling migrants’ stories. Along the way, she produced some of Texas’ most influential border reporting, including the Hillman Prize-winning “Death on Sevenmile Road,” an exposé of how state police shot at a truck from a helicopter, killing migrants riding in the bed.
Her 2014 four-part series on migrant death in South Texas for the Observer and the Guardian, “Beyond the Border,” won an Emmy and a National Magazine Award. She is the author of Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI, and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty, a 2017 book based on her reporting on Zetas cartel money laundering.
Del Bosque, now based in Tucson, Arizona, co-leads The Border Chronicle, a newsletter featuring analysis and on-the-ground reporting about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and she also serves as investigative editor for Lighthouse Reports.
