>> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial future. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> carnegie corporation of new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: the political drama over the u.s. supreme court vacancy took a new twist today. the republican governor of nevada, brian sandoval, withdrew his name from consideration. sandoval said in a statement: "the notion of being considered for a seat on the highest court in the land is beyond humbling." but he gave no reason for his decision. senate republicans say they will not consider any nominee from president obama. nevertheless, the white house says the president will meet with senate leaders next week. battered communities across southeastern virginia began cleaning up today, after tornadoes struck wednesday evening. the storms killed four people and injured dozens more. three of the dead were in the small town of waverly, about 40 miles southeast of richmond. governor terry mcauliffe declared a state of emergency and toured the area today. >> i was just amazed at the length and the width of this tornado that struck here. but as you go along and then you'll see structures totally gone, you will see just gigantic areas of trees just snapped in half, gigantic trees just laying on the ground. >> sreenivasan: farther north, in pennsylvania, the storm system roared through lancaster county, peeling off roofs and damaging businesses. two 600-foot chicken sheds and several barns were destroyed. the number of migrants stranded in northern greece built today as macedonia allowed only a trickle to head north. some 3,500 people braved bitter cold at a camp on the greek side this morning as they waited to cross. to the south, thousands more set up camp at a port terminal outside athens after police barred them from moving on. >> some people say a lot of things, make us worried, and... like the border is closing, and i don't know, i don't know. a lot of things make us more and more and more tired. and we only need these things to be solved, and to know what should we do. we can't like, only sleep in the streets, and we don't know what >> sreenivasan: greece also recalled its ambassador to austria, to protest border restrictions by the austrians and balkan states. and prime minister alexis tsipras insisted his country cannot become a "warehouse" for refugees. in italy, the national senate voted to allow civil unions for gay couples after a battle that lasted for years. the bill passed easily and now goes to the lower house of parliament for final approval. prime minister matteo renzi called the vote "historic." italy would be the last country in western europe to take that step. but gay and lesbian groups denounced the measure because it does not allow gay adoption. back in this country, apple asked a federal magistrate to reverse her order on helping the fbi hack a locked iphone. it was used by one of the killers in the mass shootings in san bernardino, california. the company's court filing accused the government of seeking dangerous power over digital privacy. and wall street stayed in the win column for a second day. the dow jones industrial average gained 212 points to close near 16,700. the nasdaq rose nearly 40 points, and the s&p 500 added almost 22. still to come on the newshour: how hillary clinton and bernie sanders fare among minority voters. the tricky diplomacy surrounding the syrian cease-fire. when economic anxiety meets politics, and much more. >> sreenivasan: this day was a quiet one on the republican campaign trail: five candidates left, but no scheduled events. tonight, though, they're facing off in houston, for debate number 10. donald trump, winner of three straight contests, will once again be center stage. the big question: how the other four candidates try to slow him down. as for the two democrats, they were out stumping today, but hundreds of miles apart. hillary clinton spent the day in south carolina, where democrats vote this saturday. in kingstree, she stressed one of the central themes of her palmetto state campaign: equality. >> i want to break down all the barriers, that stand in the way of people everywhere in our country, pursuing and achieving their god-given potential. because america can't live up to its potential, unless we remove the barriers to let every american to live up to the chance to live up to his or her potential. >> sreenivasan: her rival, bernie sanders, turned his focus away from south carolina today. he started things off in ohio, one of the many states that vote in march. from there he moved on to flint, michigan, the city still reeling from the discovery that its drinking water had been tainted with lead. >> if there's any silver lining out of this tragedy, is that it is my hope that the american people will look at flint and say never again can we allow a community to undergo this. >> sreenivasan: on the ground in south carolina today is our own judy woodruff, who joins us from columbia. how important is south carolina for hillary clinton's campaign? >> woodruff: hi there, hari, from across the street from the state capitol here in columbia, it's important for hillary clinton. i have to say, though, the expectation is that she clearly is going to win. the polls all have her ahead by more than double digits. so it's really a matter of expectations, can she beat that. i had a political science professor at the university of south carolina say to me today, if she wins by less than 20 points, it's a moral victory for bernie sanders. that's how far ahead she is. some of that is clearly on the strength of the african-american community. they make up more than half of the democratic primary vote and that's going to be in that report i'm working on for the "newshour" tomorrow. but her people are working the state, hari, they're not taking it for granted but it's about the margins now for her. >> sreenivasan: the sanders campaign is doing a different tactic, not there nearly as much. >> woodruff: that's right. senator sanders was here yesterday, had a morning news conference then took off for other states. had big rallies yesterday in the midwest, in the southwestern u.s. he has a strong effort here, hari. he was here in january, but losing nevada, coming in five points behind hillary clinton in nevada really made a difference, and now the sanders camp say they are focused on the super tuesday states, the eleven states where democrats will come out and vote next tuesday. so they have been very open about that. it's not that they're giving up on south carolina by any means. they have something like 200 people working the state for them right now, but their focus is on the future. it's on missouri. it's on states like oklahoma where senator sanders had that big turnout last night or yesterday in tulsa and they, too, talk about the margin. they say they don't expect to win here, they just don't want to hold down secretary clinton's margin. >> sreenivasan: do you see and hear the evidence on the air waves, the i political ads on tv and radio as you travel from interview to interview? >> you do. you certainly see it in the hotel room, people talk about the ads. bernie sanders was on the air here early, but hillary clinton has stepped up her advertising here in the last week. you see this new ad they put on a few days ago featuring the actor morgan freeman with his very distinctive voice reminding anybody who's watching that hillary clinton had been coming to south carolina since she was a law student, recapping her connection to this state, that clearly helps her. sanders is running a lot of ads on radio. he spent over a million dollars, but at this point, as we get down to the vote on saturday, it's more of hillary clinton on the air. >> sreenivasan: what are the issues that are most important to south carolinians now that you're hearing from? >> hari, it's probably what you're hearing in other parts of the country from democrats. they talk about the economy. they want to see jobs. a lot of discussion about equality, about how they feel that part of the country, part of america has been left out of the prosperity we've seen in the recovery since the financial collapse. and when you talk to voters, they talk about which candidate is going to be better able to deliver relief from what they feel is a growing inequality, and they also bring up who can beat the republican in the fall. they're already talking about donald trump. they've noticed how well he's doing. they want a candidate who can beat him and among the candidates or among the voters i've spoken to, some of them think hillary clinton would be the stronger candidate against donald trump. others say that -- bernie sanders. so i've seen a split in that way, but these voters are very practical in their thinking, and i think that may tell you something about super tuesday as well. >> sreenivasan: judy woodruff on the road in columbia, south carolina. looking for a report on the road tomorrow night. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: the president met this afternoon at the state department with members of his national security team to discuss the fight against isis and the state of the larger war in syria, as a key deadline approaches. he spoke to reporters afterwards. none of us are under any illusions. we're all aware of the many potential pit falls and there are plenty of reasons for skepticism, but history would judge us harshly if we did not do our part in at least trying to end this terrible conflict with diplomacy. if implemented -- and that's a significant "if "-- the cessation could reduce the violence and get more food and aid to syrians who are suffering and desperately need it. it could save lives. potentially, it could also lead to negotiations on a political settlement to end the civil war so that everybody can focus their attention on destroying i.s.i.l. that's why the united states will do everything we can to maximize the chances of success in the sees says for hostilities. >> sreenivasan: now, what are the realities for a potential halt to some of the violence and delivery of much needed aid in syria? chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner reports. >> warner: definitely mixed signals of progress before tomorrow's midnight cease-fire deadline in syria. aid trucks rolled into a rebel- held damascus suburb yesterday, long besieged by the assad regime. but in syria's east, a u.n. air drop of food went awry. earlier in the week, russia claimed it's pared back bombing against u.s.-backed rebels. >> ( translated ): russian aviation performs no strikes in these regions, where we have received or are continuing to receive claims to cease the fire and start negotiations. >> warner: but today there were reports of russian bombing of rebel-held areas in syria's northwest, and regime bombing in a suburb of damascus. the last-ditch agreement, brokered monday by the u.s. and russia, called for a "cessation of hostilities." it exempts operations against isis, the al-qaeda linked jabhat al nusra, and terror groups on a u.n.-list. the syrian government of president bashar assad has signed on, as have some rebel groups. but the major saudi-backed opposition group said it would commit to just two weeks. >> to be frank with you we do not trust russia, we do not trust this regime. >> warner: and u.s. ally turkey said it wants to continue hitting syrian kurds linked to turkey's own kurdish insurgents the day after it was announced, in washington, senators pressed secretary of state john kerry: >> i just hope it's not a rope- a-dope deal. >> well, it may be. i'm not going to sit here. i'm not going to say this process is sure to work because i don't know. but i know that this is the best way to try to end the war and it's the only alternative before us if indeed we're going to have a political settlement. >> warner: many syria experts are skeptical too. robert ford, former ambassador to syria, resigned in 2014 over the president's refusal to arm the syrian rebels, now a fellow with the middle east institute in washington, he also teaches at yale. >> secretary kerry has made huge, huge, huge efforts but it's too early to say if it represents any progress. the cease-fire is going to be a huge uphill. the russians and the syrian regime have incentives to keep fighting. i don't think the war is over by any means. >> warner: but prem kumar, who worked on syria on the national security council until last year, says it's an important first step. >> it is an important process that will hopefully lead to increase humanitarian assistance, i think we have seen then longer term if the process holds to discussions about longer term political issues that have bedeviled syria for several years now. >> warner: he thinks it marks a welcome evolution in u.s. thinking, away from regime change. >> what is really important about this recent initiative is that this begins to shift the which u.s. and its partners increase pressure on assad to negotiate his own departure to a paradigm of trying to freeze the conflict, provide humanitarian assistance, and set-up a process to address the longer term political issues. >> warner: what caused that shift-- the sudden insertion of russian bombers and advisers late last september. >> ( translated ): the only right way to fight international terrorism in syria and on the territory of the states neighboring it, as they are there, is to act preemptively. >> warner: as secretary kerry negotiated for a peace process with russia's foreign minister, russian bombers were dramatically tilting the battlefield. five months ago, the rebels were gaining ground. now, assad's forces have retaken key areas in the west and surrounded aleppo, syria's largest city. and the islamic state has expanded in the east. ford sees russia, along with iran, turkey and saudi arabia, all backing different fighting elements, as exerting far more leverage now than the u.s. >> russia absolutely is in the driver's seat and the american's are watching the car drive by. americans are becoming basically irrelevant. >> warner: former french foreign minister laurent fabius said the u.s. lost credibility when it didn't follow through on the president's threat to strike syria for using chemical weapons in 2013. he added, "one doesn't get the sense that there is a very strong commitment. and obviously the iranians and russians feel that. indeed, mr obama repeatedly resisted calls to arm moderate rebel groups, as he explained to the "new york times" in 2014: >> it was always a fantasy-- this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and >> warner: mr. obama's aides say he feared arming inexperienced rebels would draw the u.s. down a slippery slope of deeper military involvement. but ford says the president's unwillingness did just that. >> i think that their inaction put us on a slippery slope. frankly we now have american military personnel operating in syria margaret none of us wanted that in 2011, 2012, 2013. but now we're flying combat operations against the islamic state. not syrians taking care of it americans having to help syrians take care of it. >> warner: and in fact the administration is asking congress for more funding for those operations. so what happens if this cease fire fails? on tuesday, kerry hinted deeper military aid could be forthcoming. >> and there is a significant discussion taking place now about plan b in the event that we don't succeed at the table. >> warner: foreign relations committee chair bob corker was dubious. >> there is no plan b, russia knows there will be no plan b. >> i saw secretary kerry talk about plan b. that's nice. we'll see if there's any there there. >> warner: kumar said there is the possibility of giving the rebels more powerful weaponry or creating safe-zones inside syria. but even he doubts how more the pesident will do in his remaining 11 months. >> i think it is clearly going i think it is unlikely that the administration is going to do a 180 degree turn in its policy on syria, but i think if it is to believe that there is progress in sight and that the u.s. needs to do more to achieve an end to the conflict. then i think they would be willing to consider it. >> warner: any road toward peace depends first on whether the bombing stops this weekend. for the pbs newshour, i'm margaret warner. >> sreenivasan: stay with us, coming up on the newshour: how the mother of columbine shooter dylan klebold came to terms with her son's actions. the tunnels that house tijuana's homeless. and a poet's take on the popular term-- "black girl magic." but first, the economic recovery may be well into its sixth year and the jobless rate is at its lowest point since 2008. even so, it's clear many americans still feel plenty of anxiety either about their job, their income, their finances or what may be happening to their quality of life. economics correspondent paul solman dives deeper into what's behind that, with the first of two conversations he has on this subject, this one features a liberal perspective. part of our weekly series, "making sense," which airs every thursday on the newshour. >> aw, we love you, we love you! >> reporter: not again, you may be thinking. >> we're gonna build a big beautiful wall. >> there is nothing we cannot accomplish! >> reporter: another story on trump and sanders as political outliers defining this year's presidential campaign? >> we're in first place. everywhere. >> reporter: but why have they taken america by storm? we put that question to longtime liberal thinker robert reich, friend of hillary clinton since college, secretary of labor under her husband bill, but now a bernie sanders supporter. are you surprised by the turn america has taken politically in the last half year? >> i'm surprised at how fast it happened. i predicted in my book "saving capitalism" that the biggest political contest in the future would be between, not democrats and republicans, but between the anti-establishment populists and the establishment. because i saw the increase in this degree of anxious class, i call it, anger and frustration, that the economy and society are no longer working for them. >> reporter: covering economic developments in america since the 1970s, i too have been chronicling this growing anxiety my entire career. i met security guard bobby hicks five years ago. >> i am the most insecure security officer you will meet, because i'm worried. right now, i live paycheck to paycheck. >> reporter: cookie sheers is an administrative assistant at a boston nonprofit. >> we all feel stuck, like you're just at that edge of water where you can come up for air every few minutes, but never long enough to feel that you've accomplished something you always have to go back down. >> reporter: but anxiety isn't limited to the unskilled these days. mike najjar is a lawyer in lowell, massachusetts. >> i feel like i'm in quicksand- - not getting ahead, not having any growth. >> i don't feel like i'm getting ahead at all. as a matter of fact, i was laid off. >> reporter: after 40 years in the book business, does brian mccormick have a job now? >> i do, i do. i'm punching a cash register like i did when i was 22 years old. >> as recent college graduate biola jeje puts it... >> take all this debt, get an education, and have it lead nowhere, to like no sustainable employment, no job with health benefits or pensions or any of that, just be out on their own. >> i'm in an uber, part of the explosion in the so-called sharing economy. this very group includes independent contractors, free agents, temporary workers, the self-employed. >> reporter: work without employee benefits: one of the topics reich tackles in a series of videos made with the so- called progressive group, moveon.org. >> it's estimated that in five years, over 40% of the american labor force will be in such uncertain work, in a decade most of us. this shifts all the risks onto workers. >> reporter: workers like uber driver kim miller, who has to pay for her own car and all related expenses. >> somedays i have days where i do only around $12 dollars, $15 dollars an hour, and i come home feeling like i wasted my time. >> reporter: or retail clerks like melody pabon, who don't know when they'll work, or for how many hours, from one week to the next. >> am i going to be playing juggling with my money, and work two days a week, three days a week, four days a week not knowing? >> no wonder, according to polls, almost a quarter of american workers worry they won't have enough to live on in the future. that's up from 15% a decade ago. >> reporter: and you see it playing out politically in both parties right? >> in both parties. you've got a large number of people in america, in the middle class, who are working harder than ever but they're angry and frustrated because they're not getting ahead. their wages are either stagnating or actually dropping. their jobs are less secure. two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck. >> when you say "paycheck to paycheck", the latest data as of this week were that 63% of americans did not have more than $500 socked away for a sudden expense. >> almost nothing socked away. black and minority americans on average have literally nothing socked away for emergency. and some people in the middle class, particularly in the lower middle class, look to poor people and say "well, they're getting all these benefits. i'm the one who's stuck." >> happy holidays, uncle bob. >> what's good about 'iem? >> reporter: people like conservative "uncle bob," portrayed by reich himself in this video. >> i'm paying too much in taxes to support poor people who are sitting on their duffs! >> reporter: meanwhile, in the left wing camp... >> people are caught in a vise and they feel like the game is rigged. >> reporter: are they overstating it or are they picking up on something that's real? >> unfortunately, the game is rigged. just over a year ago, two political scientists, one from princeton, one from northwestern, gilens and page, did a study looking very carefully at about over 2,000 policy issues. and their conclusion was the wealthy and big corporations and wall street were the only ones that had any influence. the average american had literally no influence at all. >> according to an investigation by the "new york times," half of all the money contributed so far to democratic and republican presidential candidates, $176 million , has come from just 158 families, along with the companies they own or control. i used to think and i used to write about it; inequality as being the result of globalization and technological change. but what has happened particularly over the last 20 years is that there is a third factor, political power. it is this vicious cycle of the wealthy and big corporations and wall street getting rule changes, legal changes that advantage them and really disadvantage most other people. >> reporter: when you talk to a rich person who doesn't agree with you politically, what do you say to them? >> i say, "you have a stake in raising wages and expanding the middle class and more americans doing better because then you will do better. who are your customers after all?" >> the top one percent is living well, and they don't get it. >> reporter: denise barrant, a self-described conservative republican, was unemployed and in foreclosure in 2011. >> there's tons of people like myself out there who are well- educated, who have had good jobs who are sort of the middle management people, but they've outsourced our jobs, and the top people are still making a lot of money and then congratulating themselves at how efficient they've been. >> reporter: the term that gets turned around over and over again is the american dream. and it doesn't seem as if that's anywhere near as true now as in the past. >> no. this is a country that prided itself on upward mobility, on rags to riches, on horatio alger stories. it's only over the last two years that you see polls saying that most americans believe that their children are not going to live as well as they lived. this is new, paul. this is counter to our tradition and our history. >> reporter: which may help explain why this has been, thus far, such an untraditional election year. for the pbs newshour, this is economics correspondent paul solman. >> sreenivasan: in the coming weeks, paul will return with a second conversation, from a well-known conservative thinker and writer, charles murray. now, coming to terms with a beloved son turned killer... in a mass murder that would shock the nation. jeffrey brown has this latest addition to the newshour bookshelf. a warning: the conversation grapples with a subject that may be upsetting to some viewers. >> brown: april 20, 1999, columbine high school in littleton, colorado. two seniors, eric harris and dylan klebold, walked into the school armed with weapons and homemade bombs. less than an hour later, 12 students and one teacher were dead. 24 students injured. and the two shooters had turned the guns on themselves. it was a searing time for the community, for the victims' families, and for the nation. 17 years later, sue klebold, the mother of dylan, writes of a son she thought she knew, the parent she thought she was, a tragedy and its aftermath her new book is, "a mother's reckoning." sue klebold joins us now from denver. sue klebold, you write earlier in this book, the ordinariness of our lives before columbine will perhaps be the hardest for people to understand about my story. for me, it is also the most important. why is that the most important thing? >> because i want people to understand that, if someone is struggling with thoughts of suicide or, in some cases, homicide, that these issues can be hidden, and we should all try to be more mindful of what our loved ones are thinking, what might be hidden behind their expressions, and how their behaviors can lie if they're very sophisticated at hiding what they're thinking and feeling. >> brown: in fact, just days before the shooting, dylan went to the prom, you write of seeing him when he came home and you write of saying that night, i've done a good job with this kid. you truly believed that at that moment? >> i truly believed that at that moment. i felt that he had had a good year, a good evening. i felt that he was contented and that he was healthy and that he was moving forward with his life. >> brown: the questions from everyone, of course, whether in sorrow or anger or just utter confusion is how could you not have known? right? how could you not have known your son was so troubled that he was capable of something like this? and you write about incidents along the way, which in pretrough suspect, might have said something. but how do you answer that question? how could you not have known? >> sometimes teen behaviors such as sullenness, maybe differing sleep patterns, maybe they sleep too much or too little, these can all be perceived as normal teen behaviors. dylan did get into trouble in his junior year of high school, and he stole something, he got in trouble at school, he scratched a locker. those were indicators that something might be wrong, but at that time i was not aware those could be indicaters of depression or possibly some kind of brain health issue. but what did happen after that was he promised us he would get his life on track, and he did. he had a full 14 months after that, from that moment until tragedy, where he was doing all the things a healthy person would do -- he was going to school, he held a job, he had applied at four colleges, just the weekend before the tragedy he picked out his dorm room for college, and he went to a prom with 12 of his friends, came home and told me he had the best time of his life. these are not behaviors one would expect of someone who is preparing to die or kill. >> brown: perhaps the roughest chapter for me in my reading is one entitled the end of denial because you write about the denial you were in for a long time after the shootings, after the killings, even six months afterwards, until you were shown evidence by the police, walked through the time line of what happened, see exactly what dylan had done in shooting individuals, what he said to them, and kind of realizing for the first time that he had not been coerced, that he had not been duped, that he had not been whatever it was you thought, right? >> well, as you said, up until that point, knowing dylan and knowing the kind of person he was, those of us who loved and knew him didn't believe he was capable of intentionally harming people or killing people. so we clung to beliefs such as you suggested, that he had been coerced or tricked or that this was a prank that had somehow gone wrong. six months affidavit tragedy when i was finally shown the evidence at the sheriff's department and we saw things such as the basement tapes, we saw photographs of some of their weapons, i remember being -- feeling just ill. i stood up and thought i was going to be sick. it was such a shock to me because it didn't make sense that the child that i loved could actually be doing those things or could have planned to do those things and, for me, that was almost the beginning of grief all over again because i had to grieve for a different human being than i had loved before. >> brown: you focus later on on the suicide aspect to this, not pushing aside the murder aspect, but the suicide of your own son, which really forces and focuses the issue on depression. now, explain that. what, in the end, do you think led him to commit these atrocities? >> i think, when we look at suicide and we look at murder-suicide as one small subset of suicidal acts, we have to understand that this is a very complex issue, that there are no simple answers or simple reasons or explanations. the things that occur for someone to experience that level of suicidality, they are things such as biological factors, genetic factors, environmental factors, both the home, the school, the culture, personality factors, and also triggering factors such as events that occur -- losses, bullying, arrests -- and it is all of those things working together, operating for that one vulnerable person. and when someone begins to deteriorate, when their thoughts are becoming suicidal, they are in the process of losing access to their own tools of self-governments, of conscience, of reason, and they reach a state where they are not thinking the way the rest of us are thinking, if we are healthy. they don't have the same decision points, and i believe that dylan's brain health was the reason that he was involved. he was not able to -- to act in a way that he would have if he were not unwell. >> brown: you write often here of the victims, of their families, of the pain that you have felt from the beginning. you're donating your profits, i understand, from the book to charitable organizations that look at mental health issues. but why write the book at all? why in the first place? you know that, from the moment this happened until now, people wonder about you, wonder about -- probably wonder now about the motives in writing the book. why did you want to do it? >> the reasons for me, i think, were primarily because people who knew me or knew dylan or knew our story would give me feedback, that they were affected, that their parenting changed because of this. i had met an individual among many individuals, one who had problems with a youngster who was 13, and her daughter acted a little bit different, a little bit more withdrawn, and the mother told me, because i know you and because i know that kids can hide things and some of the things that they hide can be lethal, she explored, she dug into the kid's life, asked her daughter repeatedly and in depth and finally was able to learn from her daughter that she had been raped when she had left the house once when she was not supposed to. so i feel we all have -- the most important thing we can do is accept the concept that someone we love may not be feeling inside the way they present to us, and that is a responsibility we have as parents and family members to try to help them, to try to elicit from them what they're experiencing and to -- and if we do learn that they are having suicidal thoughts or other thoughts that are symptomatic of illness, to get them help. >> brown: all right. the book is "a mother's reckoning," living in the aftermath of strategy. sue klebold. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: about 1,000 homeless people live in tijuana. many of them are migrants on the way to the u.s. and because of police raids, they're living in a river canal, hiding in the canal's branching tunnels. kpbs fronteras reporter jean guerrero went inside the tunnels to learn about the struggles these migrants face. a warning: some of the images in this story may be disturbing. >> reporter: jose alberto zavala is one of hundreds of migrants living inside the tijuana river canal's tunnels. he says he doesn't feel safe anywhere else. >> ( translated ): they see us outside and the police picks us up. >> reporter: zavala is known as chapo, like the mexican drug lord, because of his short stature. but the similarities pretty much end there. he recently rescued this cat from the side of the road. >> ( translated ): the other day, i banged myself up because the police were trying to put me in one of the rehab centers. but that's a kidnapping. what they do is a violation of human rights. >> reporter: for years, tijuana's homeless were living out in the open, in makeshift tents in a homeless encampment in the tijuana river canal known as el bordo. but last spring, the municipal government evacuated the encampment, placing hundreds of people into rehab centers, many against their will. officials say the migrants were hurting tourism and committing crimes. many were using heroin or methamphetamine after being deported from the u.s., where they had families and jobs. some, like chapo, say they don't do drugs at all, but were sent to rehab anyway. since then, hundreds have escaped or were released from these facilities. they're now hiding in the storm drains. police sometimes track them down and place them back in rehab. others are taken to jail, or put on buses out of town. police raids of the canal are sometimes proving fatal. the canal is flanked by tijuana's busiest highways, and when the migrants run from the police, some are killed by cars speeding past. just last month, at least two were killed trying to escape police. chapo has erected memorial wooden crosses for several friends he says he lost during police raids. >> ( translated ): the 18th, also chapitas, and the guy from oaxaca. but i don't know why! >> reporter: chapo says the police sometimes arrest migrants when they're just standing on the street, trying to find work in construction, or washing car windshields with dirty rags. a migrant who called himself carlos francisco says he had been run over by a car while running across the highway during a police raid two days prior. he was injured so badly he couldn't walk. >> ahhh! >> reporter: he says the police came while he and his friends were sleeping in the canal. >> ( translated ): they come and grab us. they-- they beat us. >> reporter: another man had a large gash on his head from where he says police threw him against the asphalt during the same raid. tijuana's police chief alejandro lares defends his policy of flushing everybody out of the canal. he says he is planning a full- scale clearing operation in the coming weeks. >> we're going to take over the whole ravine on tijuana. >> reporter: the federal government has jurisdiction over the canal, but the tijuana police department has permission to patrol the area. >> it's a no man's land. so for that, it's easier for them to buy drugs, sell drugs, and obviously, to consume drugs. >> reporter: lares says he has ordered 14 all-terrain vehicles to patrol the canal. he expects them to arrive any day now. when asked about alleged police beatings, he says migrants should file complaints so he can investigate. >> i'm not going to tolerate any abuse from an officer to a citizen. >> reporter: migrants say they think filing complaints would do them more harm than good. they fear being arrested if they confront police. back in the tunnels, chapo says the current strategy of flushing migrants out of the canal makes life so hard for them they have no choice but to turn to petty crimes, which can get them arrested. it's a vicious cycle. >> ( translated ): they kick you and say, you have to come with them. why? because you don't have an i.d. you shouldn't be sleeping here. where do you want me to sleep if you don't let me work? if i go collect cans, you pick me up. if i go to the dumpster, you pick me up. >> reporter: he doesn't think tijuana officials will ever succeed in ridding the city of homeless migrants. >> ( translated ): this is the border. there will always be migrants. always, always. >> reporter: but as police raids of the canal become more sophisticated and frequent, the tunnel dwellers face a growing challenge. jean guerrero, kpbs news. >> sreenivasan: next we turn to our year-long series race matters. tonight special correspondent charlayne hunter gault sits down with beth-ann hardison, a former model and current owner of a new york modeling agency. as hollywood comes under fire for the lack of diversity, hardison shares her solution for making the fashion industry more inclusive. for generations, this is the face of the fashion industry. beautiful models in stunning designer outfits, but that face came to be almost always white with a few notable exceptions like naomi campbell and niman. enter beth-ann hardison, herself a former model who decided that just wasn't good enough. i caught up with her at her home base in new york city. beth-ann hardison, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> reporter: you know, we've seen all the beautiful models like beverly johnson, imam, even yourself in magazines for many years but there weren't many of you. what was that like? >> there were in back in the day in h the '70s and eighties, there was a great deal difference between runway and the prince and by 2000 and the '90s, it was pretty good and mid '90s, it began to disappear. it was a change of the industry because the eastern european models started to come in and things change, the business changed. >> reporter: so this influx of non-black people, non-women of color, really decimated the ranks of black models on the runway? >> it definitely did. it changed everything. when they began to bring in more girls from outside, what changed greatly was the body alignment of the eastern european girls because the hips are very narrow, the bodies are very long and that discovery was something else. >> reporter: what was wrong with that and what did you do about it? >> what i did is i got encouraged to, please, do something, and i had the first press conference in 2007 and pulled together editors, models, people who basically represented models, everyone, writers, in a room of 86 seats and sat down and discussed the whole situation. >> reporter: so you moved from being a model to a muse to a revolutionary. you called out some of the most famous designers in the world of fashion. did you tell them they were perpetuating racism? >> no, i didn't say that exactly. what i said is that, no matter what your intention is, the result is racism, so that if they felt like, well, i mean, i'm not a racist. well, i didn't say you're a racist. i said the act of eliminating one race or not being inclusive, the result is racism. if you consistently demonstrate you not being inclusive, then the result is racism. >> reporter: so what was their reaction and what happened as a result? >> what i had done is written this letter specifically to the councils of fashion in each fashion city so the councils of fashion got the letter and all the names are written on each one, so that's london, paris, milan, and new york. so as they got the letter, i had already spoken to the press, at the same time they were getting the letter, so the press, which is woman's wear daily, which is our trade paper, contacted each one of them. british was very good. she said we have issues with this ourselves. we would like you to come in and speak to us. the italians said we never had this as an issue because no one brought it to our attentions before. and the parisians laughed it off and the people in new york said why didn't she speak to us, she knows us! >> reporter: why did you go the way you thought you had to go instead of speaking to them? >> when you have an issue that big, it's not a personal conversation. once it went -- one publication picked it up, then it became important other news medias picked it up and it became a very important issue because it was done in such a strong way. >> reporter: but why was it important? people say, they're just talking ant fashion, that's just something people play with. >> because fashion is not just on our tiny island no one knows anything about. >about, now it's part of popular culture and influencing young people. everything involves fashion. it's showing people what things should look like. it's giving you the idea what we see, and how we act when it comes to race. >> reporter: when you look beyond the fashion industry and you look at the fact so much in the corporate world is still dominated by white males, how much of the solution you came up with can adapted to the corporate world and other areas, like even hollywood where you have major problems with diversity? what about what you did is amicable in those -- applicable in those situations? >> because slowly my industry is starting to become more inclusive, and when you begin to see in magazines they are now becoming moirn conclusive, when you start to see runway shows, blacks, girls, guys, it starts to remind people it's okay, it doesn't hurt, it's not going to make you sick, it's not a disease to be inclusive. >> reporter: but i guess my question is, in terms of the tactics you used, what would you offer as a solution to parts of our society that are not inclusive and not as diverse as they should be? >> that's a very good question. the only thing i can answer this is everyone has to be responsible, everyone has to think twice about it. i have to remind people that people who are privileged are the first ones who say why do we always have to talk about race? i don't see what is the problem. race, we're always bringing up race. i mean, i really don't see a problem with it. that's a privileged attitude. if you don't think you're privileged, you say that, that makes you privileged, because there is a problem. >> reporter: so you have to stay on the case. >> you never can take your foot off the gas. >> reporter: and this would apply to the corporate world as well as the world of fashion? >> everything. should we all stop thinking consciously about race or should we consciously think about race? yes, i think we should consciously think about race. >> reporter: and you need people like yourself in the corporate world taking positions like you took? >> not only people like myself, we need more white people who think like myself who are not afraid to speak up who say, we need this to change, let's do something. once you diversify, it reminds people gently how the world looks. don't book a model because she's black, book a model because she's undeniably beautiful, that's for him and her, and then we can compete with our white counterpart. it's not just the black model i'm fighting for, i'm fighting for any non-caucasian model. the caucasian kid is good, she can run, i'm looking for everyone else in the world. >> reporter: beth-ann hardison, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> sreenivasan: tomorrow on the "newshour", jeffrey brown exams the cause and implications of the lack of diversity in the entertainment industry. >> sreenivasan: finally another installment in our brief but spectacular series. today, we hear from poet mahogany l. browne, who is coordinating a "women of the world poetry slam" running march 9 through 12 in brooklyn, new york. this piece is entitled "black girl magic." >> they say you ain't supposed to be here, black girl, you ain't supposed to wear red lipstick, wear high heels, you ain't supposed to smile in public, you ain't supposed to smile nowhere. you ain't supposed to be more than a girlfriend. you ain't supposed to get married. you ain't supposed to dream that big or dream at all. you ain't supposed to do nothing but carry babies and weaves and silence and families and carry confusion and carry a nation, but never an opinion, because you ain't supposed to have nothing to say, black girl, not unless it's a joke, because you ain't supposed to love yourself, black girl, you ain't supposed to find nothing worth saving in all that brown. you ain't supposed to know tina, beyonce, cecilie, shonda, rimes, shine, shine, shine, black girl. you ain't supposed to love your mind, you ain't supposed to love, you ain't supposed to be love up on. you supposed to pop out babies and hide the stretch marks and be so still they think you're a statue, so still they think you're a chalked outline. so still they keep thinking you're stone until you look more medusa than viola davis, but you tell them you are more than a hot comb and a wash and set, you are conkunta kinte's friend. you are worth loving your children, you black girl fry you black girl fly, you black girl wonder, you black girl bloom, you black girl, black girl, and you turn into a beautiful black woman right before our eyes. my name is mahogany l. browne. and this is my brief but spectacular take on black girl magic. > >> sreenivasan: you can watch other episodes of our brief but spectacular series on our facebook page: facebook.com/newshour. on the newshour online, new orleans culture plays a big role in beyonce's video for her latest single, "formation," and so do its residents, including big freedia, known as "the queen of bounce" after the style of hip-hop she performs. we talked to the music artist about her southern roots and the origins of bounce. read that conversation on our home page. and we have more from robert reich. the economist and former secretary of labor sat down with paul solman to discuss middle-class anxiety and the current state of the economy. find that on our making sense page. all that and more is on our website, pbs.org/newshour. tune in later tonight, on charlie rose the week: the founder of airbnb brian chesky on the sharing economy. and that's the newshour for tonight. on friday, judy woodruff's report from south carolina, a day ahead of the democratic primary. i'm hari sreenivasan. join us online, and again here tomorrow evening with our analysis of the week's news with syndicated columnist mark shields and ramesh ponnuru of the "national review." for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> lincoln financial-- committed to helping you take charge of your financial future. >> the lemelson foundation. committed to improving lives through invention. in the u.s. and developing countries. on the web at lemelson.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. request denied. apple makes it official, formally saying it will not help the fbi, intensifying this very public fight. travel bargain? not if you're flying. why fares are rising even as jet fuel costs fall. president and ceo? if donald trump wins the us what can he still manage his company? the surprising answer tonight on "nightly business report" for thursday, february 25th. >> good evening and welcome. apple did exactly what it said it would. the world's most valuable public company formally opposed the court order to unlock the iphone used by one of the san bernardino terror attack

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