Welp, it’s 2025. Here we go!

This was stapled to a light pole in Mexico City and it seemed appropriate for the 2025 mood. (Photo credit: Melissa del Bosque)

Todd and I hope you had a restful holiday break. I visited with my husband’s family in Mexico City, and the question from everyone was “What’s going to happen with mass deportations and Trump?”

Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has been preparing to receive thousands of deported citizens. Mexican officials are testing a cell phone app that Mexicans in the U.S. can use to alert consular employees and relatives that they’re being deported, and the governor of Baja California announced that the state is setting up 25 shelters to receive deported Mexican citizens.

Having reported on the first Trump administration, I believe that the incoming president will try to do most of what he said he’d do on the campaign trail. Some of it will be hamstrung by legal and funding challenges, but this time around there will be fewer judicial and congressional guardrails to protect us or the environment from the administration’s worst impulses. In mapping out what Trump and Project 2025 have planned on border and immigration policies, I found it helpful to read an analysis by Laura Bingham, a law professor at Temple University and executive director of the Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology. Bingham kindly gave me permission to share her analysis with our readers, which you can find here.

Billionaires Double Down on Weaponizing the Information Space

Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the X platform recently advocated for a Nazi-embracing political party to win Germany’s election and last week, wrote that the U.S. should “liberate the people of Britain from its tyrannical government.”

The world’s richest man, and adviser to Trump, must never sleep, he’s so busy trolling the globe, spreading disinformation, and threatening various elected officials in democratic countries. As 2025 unfolds, the trick will be not to get caught up in the administration’s nonstop drama and alternate reality. At The Border Chronicle we plan to document the impact of Trump’s policies, expose those who profit from them (Musk and co.) and how, and what these policies will mean for our battered democracy.

One of Trump’s chief propaganda ministers, Steve Bannon, once said, “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Sadly, this strategy works very well. In an era of artificial intelligence slop, pink slime media outlets (yes, this is a thing), and social media influencer grifters, people are choosing to opt out of the news altogether. I can’t say I blame them.

Billionaires like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg now control the information space through social media platforms. They are burying fact-based news while their algorithms favor conspiracy-flavored, extremist content that enables authoritarian leaders like Trump.

At the same time, the collapse of legitimate journalism—meaning outlets that, among other things, check their facts, clearly reveal their sources, and transparently issue corrections when they print something incorrect—is now almost complete. Further hastening this crisis, billionaire owners of legacy media outlets, such as the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, have increasingly cozied up to Trump and censored reporters and cartoonists critical of his policies.

A Booming Border Chaos Industry

Get ready for the border crisis rhetoric to escalate. Where would Trump and the MAGA movement be without the border as its favorite piñata? And such a lucrative piñata it is. Last year, Todd wrote that the total border and immigration enforcement budget for 2024 (CBP and ICE added together) exceeded $30 billion for the first time ($30.2 billion). Todd has been covering border security spending since 2012. “Since the 1980s,” he wrote, “enforcement budgets have increased year after year, regardless of party and president.”

Expect Trump to top Biden’s record spending. Mass deportations alone are estimated to be as much as $315 billion or more. Musk, Peter Thiel, and other Silicon Valley billionaires are already lining up at the trough. Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz flagged this article in December noting that Musk, Thiel, and others will be making a bid for defense and security billions to build AI weapons, surveillance, and other dystopian tools. We will also keep an eye on Musk’s request to establish his SpaceX base, just north of the Texas border city of Brownsville, as an official city called Starbase, Texas.

Meanwhile, as Trump did during his first administration, border humanitarian workers will be painted as criminals and persecuted, as will journalists, people migrating, and any elected officials who refuse to carry out mass deportations and openly criticize the administration’s policies. Civilian militias emboldened by Trump have already begun escalating threats and harassment against immigrant shelters and humanitarians.

Worsening Water Woes

While Trump and his allies are ginning up fear about people seeking protection at our southern border, what they should be focused on is the survival of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo. At historic lows and choked with miles of razor wire in Texas, one of the world’s 10 most endangered rivers is a ticking time bomb for both Mexico and the United States. With climate change and the river over-allotted to agriculture and industry, water scarcity has already led to riots in Mexico and deaths. Todd, who is working on a book about climate change and the Rio Grande, wrote a moving article in December about communities who depend on this water, and what’s at stake as U.S. and Mexican officials continue to kick the can down the road.

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