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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Attempted migrant crossings on the U.S.-Mexico borders are rising but a close look at the cases shows that it's largely due to single Mexican men who are attempting to cross numerous times.
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Extreme weather sparked power outages in northern Mexico, leaving millions of people without electricity as they tried to weather a bitter cold snap.
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Central American migrants are thankful for the Biden administration's plans to go back to admitting them to the U.S. as their asylum claims are processed. But many still worry about future obstacles.
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The Biden administration will start processing some claims from asylum-seekers stranded in Mexico. But many are still worried about their fates.
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Mexico set out to sign contracts with nearly every vaccine manufacturer in hopes of vaccinating most people by summer. But that plan's run into roadblocks, as the country deals with its worst spike.
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Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says he has tested positive for the coronavirus. He has long downplayed the virus, and his diagnosis comes amid record-high cases and deaths in Mexico.
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Mexican health professionals complain the government moved too slowly to shut down business and stop the spread of the coronavirus. Doctors say hospitals around Mexico City are now at capacity.
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Barred from traveling to many countries, Americans are flocking to Mexico despite the risk of the coronavirus and CDC warnings not to visit the country.
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Hundreds of artists in Cuba were able to do something unprecedented, visibly protest against the communist regime. Their peaceful demonstration called for greater freedom of expression.
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Mexico's former defense minister is back home after the U.S. dropped drug trafficking charges against him. The move raises questions about whether he'll face justice.
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Mexico's government is moving swiftly to secure coronavirus vaccines after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador failed to enforce lockdowns and cushion the economic effects of the pandemic.
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Candidate Biden heartened asylum-seekers stranded at the border with calls for a more humane policy. But a President Biden will be tested by the continued arrival of migrants from Central America.