Introducing Inkstick’s Dotted Line Newsletter
The Dotted Line will publish news rundowns, reading recommendations, and occasional dispatches about borders and the far right.
Wherever you look, the border is there. It doesn’t matter whether you’re near an international boundary or far from one. In the United States, the government insists that it can curtail your rights if you’re within 100 miles of a port of entry — or even a coastline.
For refugees, migrants, and other displaced people, the border is even harder to shake. As I wrote in the introduction of my second book, The Marauders: Standing Up to Vigilantes in the American Borderlands: “Borders follow those who cross them. In the airport, near points of entry, and in the backs of police vans: the border is everywhere.”
Although the second Trump administration has made migration and the border centerpieces of its agenda, none of this is unique to the United States. For undocumented people on the move all around the world, being asked to produce a passport or papers could end in arrest, detention, and possibly deportation.
Now enter the far right, which is riding a resurgent wave from North America to many parts of Europe. Since what became known as Europe’s “refugee crisis,” far-right parties across the continent have fought tooth and nail to both make life more miserable for refugees and migrants and to build their own bases in the process.
That’s why Inkstick has decided to launch a new newsletter that focuses on both borders and the global far right. The Dotted Line, as we’ve named it, will include news roundups, short dispatches, reading recommendations, and the occasional interview.
For the time being, I will author The Dotted Line. So, a little about myself: I’ve been the managing editor of Inkstick Media since November 2023, but my journalism career goes back 15 years. I got my start in Israel and Palestine, where I lived for a little more than four years, and later worked in Lebanon, Qatar, and Greece as a reporter and editor. I’ve reported in 20 countries and covered a broad range of news — war, poverty, environmental crises, and local politics in Texas, to name a few — but my primary focuses have remained the same for more than a decade: borders, the far right, and the places where they intersect.
In fact, I’ve been so committed to keeping up that coverage that I’ve written three books on — forgive me if you’ve already guessed it — borders, migration, and the far right. The most recent, You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave: Refugees, Fascism, and Bloodshed in Greece, was published by Melville House in April 2025.
Inkstick is a nonprofit newsroom, and we spend most of our time focused on human security, war, conflict, and the defense industry, among other related topics. You can browse the archives at our website, where we’ve been relentlessly covering the war in Gaza, conflict in Lebanon, migration to Europe, the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn policies, changes in the defense industry, and the rise of artificial intelligence-powered weapons, for instance.
We will continue to publish that work and more on the website, but The Dotted Line is part of an ongoing process of beefing up our original reporting and analysis on Substack. If you’re not already a subscriber, now would be a good time to sign up. If you already follow our Substack, you could also consider donating to Inkstick or becoming a paid subscriber.
Inkstick Recommended Reading:
“Memories and Mourning as Israel Annexes Rafah” by Mohammed Ali*
Israel has never officially defined the entirety of its borders, but that doesn’t mean the de facto lines it draws across — and sometimes right through — Palestinian communities don’t have very real consequences. In this essay, Mohammed Ali, a longtime Inkstick contributor who writes under a pseudonym, reflects on his memories of the southern Gaza city Rafah and what remains after a year and a half of war and the far-right Israeli government’s moves to annex the territory. “The name Rafah once evoked images of sea-breeze evenings, Friday picnics under fig trees, and streets so familiar they felt like the palm of my hand,” writes Ali. “Now, the name echoes differently — I hear evacuation orders, war maps, and headlines forecasting its erasure.”
“Texas Offers a Blueprint of US Border Enforcement’s Cruel Future” by Tyler Hicks
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, a state-led immigration crackdown, he was courting some of the most far-right elements in the Texas GOP at a time when border hysteria was hitting a fever pitch. The operation has never done what the governor has claimed, but it’s now offering the Trump administration a blueprint for an even crueler future of border enforcement. And it isn’t just people crossing the border who pay the price. “The main street in Amerika Garcia Grewal’s town looks like a war zone,” Hicks writes. “She lives in Eagle Pass, Texas, a city nestled on the Rio Grande River and a natural border with Mexico. Last year, thousands of Texas National Guard troops arrived in town, bringing drones, guns, Humvees and concertina wire, including the coils now lining the heavily patrolled Main Street.”
“The Militia Next Door” by the Things That Go Boom podcast
The militia movement has deep roots in the United States, and it perhaps underscores the relationship between anti-migrant politics and ultra-nationalists more than any other branch of the American far right. Not all militias are focused on the border, of course, but the nationalism guiding the movement fuels the nativism and border hysteria that has become endemic in the country. This episode of the Things That Go Boom podcast’s second season takes listeners on a journey through the complexities of a movement that is growing in both numbers and influence.
“The Shadowy World of Conspiracy Theories is a Threat to Us All” by Shane Burley and Ben Lorber
Over the last decade, some of the most fringe conspiracy theories have migrated from AM talk radio and the darkest crevices of the internet to the halls of power in the United States. Many of those conspiracy theories — think: QAnon — harbor deeply antisemitic and anti-immigrant elements. Last summer, Inkstick was lucky enough to publish an excerpt from Burley and Lorber’s book, Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, courtesy of Melville House. Nearly a year has passed, but the piece remains as insightful and informative as it was when it was first published. “As the Capitol insurrection showed us, years of mass radicalization and entrenched conspiracism, bolstered by an insular media ecosystem, have summoned for the right a veritable army,” the authors write. “Now, that army can be deployed against the government, vulnerable minorities, and progressive leaders, and its foot soldiers are increasingly convinced that violence might be the only way to wrest ‘freedom’ from the clutches of the cabal.”