Amir Khafagy

Amir Khafagy is an award-winning New York City-based journalist. He is currently the Senior Labor Reporter with Documented NY. Much of Amir's beat explores the intersections of labor, race, class, immigration, and urban policy.


His writing has been featured in The Guardian, Vice, The New Republic, New York Mag, The City, Bloomberg, Prism, Documented, The Appeal, Dame, The American Prospect, Jacobin, and In These Times. Additionally, Amir has worked as a researcher for the critically acclaimed podcast Serial. 

Previously, Amir was a Report for America Corps member. He has been awarded the 2022 LION Local Journalism Accountability Award, Type Investigations 2021 Ida B. Wells Fellowship, The Sidney Hillman Foundation's Reporting the U.S. Workplace Program, The Newmark J-School 2021 Education Reporting Scholarship, The International Center for Journalists COVID-19 Reporting Award, The New Economics Reporting Fellowship, The Economic Hardship Reporting Grant, The Talk Poverty Writer Workshop Fellowship, The Asian American Writers Workshop Open City Fellowship, and The AARP Freelance Fellowship. 



Amir holds a BA in Urban Studies and an MA in Urban Affairs from Queens College. 


As a performer, Amir has appeared in Ping Chong & Company's Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity. He has also appeared in Gun Country, a Houses on the Moon theatre company production.

A lifelong New Yorker, Amir was born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, into a working-class, Muslim, immigrant family. His mother is Puerto Rican, and his father is an immigrant from Egypt. Follow him on Twitter @AmirKhafagy91

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Mayor Mamdani Announces Multimillion-Dollar Delivery Worker Wage Theft Settlement

More than two years after New York implemented its historic minimum wage rate for delivery workers, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Friday a multimillion-dollar settlement with three restaurant delivery app companies for widespread violation of the law. Uber Eats, Fantuan, and HungryPanda will pay nearly $5.2 million combined in restitution, civil penalties and damages to more than 49,000 delivery workers who failed to receive the mandated minimum wage since December 2023, when the law was implemented.
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Maduro’s Arrest Brings Back Memories of Venezuela’s Helping Hand to the South Bronx

President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month brought a mix of cheers and outrage from segments of Venezuelan immigrant communities. Sixteen miles away from where Maduro now sits in a Brooklyn jail cell as he awaits trial, residents of the South Bronx are feeling another emotion: nostalgia over the legacy of aid Venezuela provided them when they were most in need.
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One Year After Trump Vowed to Make America Great Again, Report Finds Workers Are Less Safe

One year into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, workers’ rights advocates are sounding the alarm on the erosion of workplace safety laws. A recent report published by Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center that promotes corporate and government accountability, found that under the second Trump Administration, there has been a significant drop in the federal enforcement of wage and workplace safety regulations. Simply put, under Trump, much less is being done to protect workers on the job.
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Mamdani Vows to Bring Taxi Workers’ Movement Into City Hall With Taxi and Limousine Commission Pick

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani tapped a longtime transit official to head the Taxi and Limousine Commission, a move meant to assure drivers that they will be represented in City Hall Surrounded by dozens of yellow cab drivers outside of LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday, the mayor announced that he was nominating transportation policy leader Midori Valdivia as chair and commissioner of the TLC, the city agency tasked with regulating the city’s for-hire vehicle industry.   Valdivia’s record...
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Migrant Workers Win Farm Union Contract, Protecting Them From H-2A Visa Wage Cuts

Seasonal migrant farm workers at an upstate New York apple orchard are entering the new year with new labor protections under a hard-won union contract, the second such farm union contract in upstate New York history.    Workers organizing with the United Farm Workers (UFW) won the contract after a yearslong legal battle with Wafler Farms, an apple producer in Wayne County. Workers had initially certified their union in 2023, but Wafler Farms sued to block the workers from organizing. A Wayne...
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Court Orders State Agency to Reopen Home Care Workers’ Wage Theft Complaints

Immigrant home care workers who have spent nearly a decade fighting to win back pay for stolen wages are starting their new year off with renewed hope. On Jan. 2, the New York Supreme Court ruled that the New York State Department of Labor must reopen hundreds of wage theft cases that were closed by the agency.  “This is a victory not only for union workers, but for all home care workers, as it is a signal to all sweatshop bosses that the wages must be paid back immediately,” said Yolanda Zha...
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Miscarriage of Justice: Amazon Accused of Violating Pregnant Workers' Rights

It was December 2024, and Libyan immigrant Hayat Bzezi, 33, was working vigorously at Amazon’s sprawling Staten Island warehouse to keep up with the seemingly endless stream of packages flowing down the conveyor belt that she had to stack and prepare to ship. The holiday season is the busiest time of year for Amazon workers, where workers are required to provide Mandatory Extra Time (MET), adding an additional full 10-hour shift to their weekly schedules. Three months pregnant, Hayat struggle...
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Mohamed Bahi Wanted a Seat at the Table. He Ended Up in Federal Court. - Documented Mohamed Bahi Wanted a Seat at the Table. He Ended Up in Federal Court.

In a courtroom full of supporters, Mohamed Bahi, Chief Liaison to the Muslim Community in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, awaited his sentencing. The 41-year-old sat stone-faced, his hands folded on the table before him. In August, he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in connection with Mayor Adams’ straw donation scandal, where it was alleged that Bahi coordinated illegal campaign donations between the mayor and Uzbek businessmen.  On Tuesday, Judge Dale Ho gave his sentence: three...
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Labor Union Builds Mamdani Momentum in the Bronx - Documented

Sophia Brewster Ford and Rajkumari Maharaj woke up early on Election Day. Donning their purple and yellow union shirts, they headed to the Morris Park Community Association polling site in the Bronx. By 9 a.m., the two immigrant women were at the polling site, handing out flyers and talking to voters.  Both women are airport workers and members of 32BJ SEIU, the largest union of property service workers in the city, with a large immigrant membership of Latino and Caribbean workers.In April...
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NYC’s First Farm Union is Fighting for a Fair Contract - Documented

Last year, urban farm workers at Brooklyn Grange made history when all  15 workers voted unanimously to join the United Farm Workers union. It was the first time an urban farm union was formed in New York City.  Now, a year later, the workers say contract negotiations have stalled. The company’s management, which operates four commercial rooftop farms across the city, refuses to meet the workers’ demands, including wage increases, stable work schedules, hazard pay, and healthcare benefits....
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New Report Reveals Uber and Lyft’s ‘Unfair’ Driver Deactivation Practices - Documented

For years, Uber and Lyft drivers have been honking their horns in distress over the growing crisis of account deactivations. Now, a new report reveals that the majority of drivers who were deactivated were given no prior notice and could not successfully appeal their deactivation.  The report, released Tuesday by the civil rights organization, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund(AALDEF), independently analyzed data from nearly 350 surveys of deactivated drivers collected by the Ne...
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In Final Debate, NYC Mayoral Candidates Condemn ICE Raid on Street Vendors - Documented

Tuesday’s federal immigration raid on street vendors in Chinatown kicked off Wednesday night’s heated second and final mayoral debate. The action, which swept up many African immigrants, marks the first time that there’s been a major ICE crackdown in the city, outside of the arrests taking place at immigration court in lower Manhattan. Notably, however, immigration issues were only brought up in the first 1o minutes of the debate.  Asking the debate’s first question, moderator Errol Louis not...
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NY Attorney General Wins $1.4M Settlement for Nearly 700 Immigrant Workers - Documented

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced today a $1.4 million settlement with Alba Services, Inc., which repeatedly violated state workers’ compensation by failing to report workplace accidents for 675 largely immigrant construction workers.  Alba’s owner, Andrew Horan, and a network of related New York City construction and demolition companies, were found by the attorney general’s office to have not only repeatedly violated state workers’ compensation laws, but also retaliated agai...
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