Carrie Kahn
Carrie Kahn is NPR's International Correspondent based in Mexico City, Mexico. She covers Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Kahn's reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning news programs including All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, and on NPR.org.
Since arriving in Mexico in the summer of 2012, on the eve of the election of President Enrique Peña Nieto and the PRI party's return to power, Kahn has reported on everything from the rise in violence throughout the country to its powerful drug cartels, and the arrest, escape and re-arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. She has reported on the Trump Administration's immigration policies and their effects on Mexico and Central America, the increasing international migration through the hemisphere, gang violence in Central America and the historic détente between the Obama Administration and Cuba.
Kahn has brought moving, personal stories to the forefront of NPR's coverage of the region. Some of her most notable coverage includes the stories of a Mexican man who was kidnapped and forced to dig a cross-border tunnel from Tijuana into San Diego, a Guatemalan family torn apart by President Trump's family separation policies and a Haitian family's situation immediately following the 2010 earthquake and on the ten-year anniversary of the disaster.
Prior to her post in Mexico, Kahn was a National Correspondent based in Los Angeles. She was the first NPR reporter into Haiti after the devastating earthquake in early 2010, and returned to the country on numerous occasions to continue NPR's coverage of the Caribbean nation. In 2005, Kahn was part of NPR's extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina, where she investigated claims of euthanasia in New Orleans hospitals, recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast and resettlement of city residents in Houston, Texas.
She has covered hurricanes, the controversial life and death of pop icon Michael Jackson and firestorms and mudslides in Southern California,. In 2008, as China hosted the world's athletes, Kahn recorded a remembrance of her Jewish grandfather and his decision to compete in Hitler's 1936 Olympics.
Before coming to NPR in 2003, Kahn worked for NPR Member stations KQED and KPBS in California, with reporting focused on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kahn is a recipient of the 2020 Cabot Prize from Columbia Journalism School, which honors distinguished reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2010 she was awarded the Headliner Award for Best in Show and Best Investigative Story for her work covering U.S. informants involved in the Mexican Drug War. Kahn's work has been cited for fairness and balance by the Poynter Institute of Media Studies. She was awarded and completed a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism at Johns Hopkins University.
Kahn received a bachelor's degree in biology from UC Santa Cruz. For several years, she was a human genetics researcher in California and in Costa Rica. She has traveled extensively throughout Mexico, Central America, Europe and the Middle East, where she worked on an English/Hebrew/Arabic magazine.
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Guatemala enters a new era after the victory of a conservative former prison official with no previous governing experience. His challenges include deep corruption, poverty, violence and migration.
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President-elect Alejandro Giammattei will face a difficult relationship with the Trump administration, which pressured the current Guatemalan president to sign an unpopular migration accord.
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Several of the victims in El Paso's mass shooting were Mexican citizens. Many in neighboring Juarez, Mexico, are shocked at what they see as a terrorist attack targeting people for their nationality.
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In what a former Mexican official called the "pic du jour," a Mexican National Guard member stands in the way of a Guatemalan woman and her son who are trying to reach the U.S. border.
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The asylum regulation, which went into effect Tuesday, may force Guatemala to take in migrants from elsewhere in Central America. Critics say this is a problem for the impoverished, violent country.
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Mexico appears willing to adopt U.S. terms on a number of key changes to its border policy. Also, a new poll on abortion, and automakers are talking about emissions standards.
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Mexico's president says President Trump's threat of tariffs will not stem the flow of migrants from Central America. He says Mexico deports tens of thousands of people a month, but the number getting through is larger.
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The president threatens Mexico with new tariffs as pressure to crack down on migration. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López says the foreign minister will go to Washington to help resolve the issue.
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3G internet availability, while still spotty and expensive, has given rise to new political openings in Cuba. That includes unprecedented public criticism of the government and organizing a non-sanctioned protest.
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Cubans are feeling the effects of the Trump administration's tough new sanctions there, which include limiting both U.S. visas and also the funds that U.S.-based relatives can send back to the island.
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History suggests that if the U.S. takes too large a role in the South American country's crisis, it could spark a worse backlash than the original issue, experts and former diplomats warn.
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Residents in the Mexican hometown of Roma actress Yalitza Aparicio are ecstatic that she was nominated for an Oscar. They're talking openly about the discrimination indigenous people face in Mexico.