Education Resource

Meet the Journalists: Nick Schifrin and Zach Fannin in Mexico

PBS NewsHour examines the depth of Mexican fears about President-Elect Donald Trump. The first story ("The Wall") examines Trump's most prominent campaign promise. Journalists Nick Schifrin and Zach Fannin follow a woman who is trying to illegally cross the Mexico-U.S. border (where illegal immigration has recently spiked) and the border guards trying to stop them. They talk to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who fear deportation and the Mexicans living along the border who also fear their daily lives and hopes will be blocked—literally—by the wall. The second story ("Economy/NAFTA") examines Trump's threats to pull out of NAFTA and block billions of dollars of remittances sent home by Mexicans living in the U.S. Schifrin and Fannin visit a community in Columbus, Ohio, decimated after an auto plant closed, and then travel to Juarez, Mexico, where auto plants have moved. They speak to a woman symbolic of the millions of working class Mexicans who need remittances to survive. The irony is not lost on Mexicans: Trump’s campaign promises, if followed through, could devastate the Mexican economy—and exacerbate the very illegal immigration along the border that Trump promised to eliminate.