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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Cash Now, Paid Later: Delivery App Fantuan Forces Workers to Pay for Customers' Orders With Their Own Cash

Ordering food on a mobile app is designed to be simple. A person chooses a restaurant, makes their order, and then that order is picked up by a delivery worker and dropped off at the customer’s doorstep.  All parts of the process — including adding a tip and paying for other delivery fees — are usually handled in the app, and the digital transaction means no physical cash is required. This isn’t always the case for Fantuan, a popular delivery app that specializes in Asian cuisine.  Deliver...
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‘I Would Have Never Opened the Door’: An Injured Worker, a $100K Offer, and the Fight Over New York’s Scaffold Law

While Jose Briones was at home recovering from his construction accident injuries, two men would come regularly to bring him groceries, courtesy of his employers, Skyline Restoration and OneTeam Restoration. Months earlier, on March 16, 2020, Briones, who worked for OneTeam, a subcontractor for Skyline, lost his balance while climbing the base of a Bronx public housing water tank. He says he wasn’t wearing a harness when he fell several feet to the roof. “I don’t really remember much because they told me that I was unconscious for some time,” he said. “I injured my head, neck, back, shoulders, knees, and hip.”
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Chili's Workers File Federal Race and Sex Bias Lawsuit

If you’ve heard of Chili’s, the famous Tex-Mex restaurant chain, you’ve probably heard the iconic jingle, “I want my baby back, baby back, baby back… Chili’s baby back ribs.” Now, their workers are singing a different tune: “I want my wages back, wages back, wages back…” On Friday, a group of Chili’s restaurant workers in Glendale, Queens, who have been organizing with One Fair Wage, filed a federal class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York agains...
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No Pee Breaks, Harassment, and Threats With a Baseball Bat: Immigrant Workers Allege Abuse at HelloFresh's Newark Warehouse

HelloFresh’s promise of convenient, healthy food has made its green boxes a ubiquitous fixture in apartment building mailrooms. But behind its lime logo and the company’s self-described mission to “change the way people eat, forever,” immigrants claim that working at HelloFresh meant enduring a workplace rife with racism, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions.  In a class-action lawsuit filed Sept. 23, former workers at HelloFresh’s Newark, New Jersey, warehouse allege they were the...
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Cesar Alarcón Dismantles Unions — Why Is He Now Creating Them?

The prospect of a new union was a welcome development for some workers at the Golden Krust manufacturing plant in the Bronx.  Beginning in July, Cesar Alarcón, a representative for Progressive Workers of the World Local 311, started showing up to the plant and meeting with workers. He treated them to lunch and promised them increased wages and lower union dues. Outside the plant, he passed out flyers saying that I.B.E.W. Local Union 1430, the current union at Golden Krust, was failing its mem...
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NYC Announces Largest Food Delivery Worker Settlement Ever Reached in US

Immigrant delivery workers have long alleged that DoorDash has shortchanged them out of their hard-earned wages. Now, the city has announced a historic settlement that aims to make them square — and then some. On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel Levine announced a $131.5 million settlement agreement with DoorDash for underpaying nearly 260,000 delivery workers. The settlement follows a years-long DCWP investigation t...
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ICE Raids on Queens Day Laborers Have Left Many Not Showing Up for Work

Normally, nearly a hundred immigrant men can be found standing on the street alongside General Hart Playground in Woodside, Queens, waiting for jobs. It’s a popular spot for day laborers, where they are picked for roofing, demolition or painting jobs. But on Sept. 1, federal immigration agents raided the playground, with eyewitnesses telling Documented that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained about eight men. It was the second raid on workers outside the park in three days...
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25 Years After 9/11, a Legacy of Labor Organizing Continues

On the morning of September 11, 2001, security guard Pedro Francisco had just finished his overnight shift at the World Trade Center. The sky was a crisp, clear blue by the time he left his post at 7 a.m. Exhausted, he headed to his second security job uptown. “Like most security officers, we have to work two jobs because you just can’t afford to work and live in a city like this without having more income,” he told Documented on Wednesday. Less than two hours later, at 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 would strike the World Trade Center’s north tower.
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On Labor Day, Mamdani Announces City's First Office to Organize Workers

New York City hosted the country’s first Labor Day celebrations 144 years ago. Today, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is announcing another milestone for labor: the establishment of the city’s first office dedicated to educating and organizing workers. Mamdani’s executive order, signed Thursday, plans to create the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power (MOWP), which will channel City Hall resources to support workers’ organizing efforts.“The Mayor’s Office of Worker Power will make sure workers have a seat at...
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New York Immigration Coalition Employees Win Union Recognition

After a nearly two-month struggle, New York Immigration Coalition management agreed to voluntarily recognize its staff’s union late Thursday.   “The New York Immigration Coalition has reached a voluntary recognition agreement with the union representing NYIC staff,” Chester Jesus Soria, a spokesperson for the NYIC, said in a statement. “A neutral third party will conduct a card check to determine majority support among the agreed bargaining unit. If majority support is confirmed, the union wi...
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NYC Delivery Workers Earned $104M Extra in Tips Under New City Law

Delivery workers have endured it all this past year: extreme heat, flooded streets, and toxic air. But now, the city can finally deliver some good news to them. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, alongside New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel Levine, are set to release a new report Wednesday showing that the estimated 70,000 delivery workers earned a collective $104 million in additional tips.The windfall of tips comes after a city law cracking down on dece...
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Vendors Face Criminal Summonses as NYPD Enforcement Continues Despite New Law

With the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council’s recent passage of new vendor-friendly laws, New York’s roughly 23,000 street vendors expected a long-awaited reprieve from what they viewed as heavy-handed enforcement by the NYPD. But recently released city data shows that in the first three months of 2026, the New York City Police Department’s issuing of criminal summons actually increased, compared to the same period the year before. This is despite Mamdani’s voiced support for decriminalizing street vending and a slew of new vendor reform laws that took effect in March and aimed to eliminate the NYPD’s issuing criminal summonses for offenses such as standing within 10 feet of a crosswalk or not displaying a permit.
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NYC Announces New App to Help Street Vendors Avoid Costly Fines

The New York City Department of Small Business Services announced Thursday a first-of-its-kind program to help street vendors operate legally on city streets via a mobile phone app. Across the five boroughs, about 120 streets are off-limits to food vendors. Vendors operating in prime locations like Times Square and the Financial District can face a fine of up to $250 if caught operating their business in a restricted area. The new program, called Venture Forward, promises to help the city’s 23,000 street vendors avoid these fines.
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Pfizer Building Subcontractor Had Years of Safety Warnings Before Near-Collapse

While city officials continue to investigate the risk of collapse at the former Pfizer corporate headquarters, Laborers Local 79 started sounding the alarm three years ago about the safety record of one of the building’s demolition subcontractors: Northeast Service Interiors LLC. In 2024 and 2025, the city granted Northeast Specialist Group, LLC, demolition permits for the site, according to public New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) records obtained by Documented. The most recent permit expired June 18, 2026.
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ICE Detained 21 Workers in Upstate New York. An Entire Community Felt the Impact.

Every summer, the small, sleepy town of Lake Placid, New York, balloons in population to more than 10,000 from its usual 2,306. Nestled deep into the wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains, the rural village, renowned for twice hosting the Winter Olympics, swells partly because of its seasonal immigrant workers. Many of the workers are on temporary J-1 Exchange Visitor Visas and help fuel the town’s summer tourist economy as Lake Placid opens itself to visitors enjoying water sports, hiking scenic trails, and sightseeing every summer.
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United Nations Intervenes in Home Care Workers’ 24-Hour Shift Ban

In their fight to ban 24-hour shifts, home care workers have faced opposition from the governor, the mayor, the speaker of the city council, and the very unions that represent them. With few options left, the workers are seeking help from the seemingly most unlikely of places: the United Nations. On April 22, the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls penned a letter to the U.S. Department of State, urging the federal government to take measures to improve the working conditions of New York City’s home care workers and eliminate 24-hour work shifts, stating that the shifts amounted to “forced labour.”
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Casino Debate Splits Democratic Candidates in Queens Senate Race

In today’s Democratic primary, the specter of a planned casino near Citi Field in Queens looms large over the contentious race for Queens’ 13th State Senatorial District. The proposal for the casino at Flushing Meadows Park, which has already been approved by the state, has divided the district that includes the primarily immigrant neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Corona, East Elmhurst, and Elmhurst. In the middle of the casino debate are those vying for the Queens Senate seat: incumbent State Sen. Jessica Ramos, State Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, and perennial candidate Hiram Monserrate, who was expelled from the New York State Senate in 2010 after being charged with assaulting his girlfriend and later convicted of federal corruption charges.
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Years After Pandemic, Immigrant Healthcare Workers Demand Better Wages and Workplace Protections

Just one day before droves of Knicks fans wearing orange and blue took to the city’s streets on Thursday, a wave of purple shirts swelled Manhattan’s Foley Square. Dressed in purple were thousands of healthcare workers, members of the union 1199SEIU, who were rallying to win a new contract with pay increases, job security, and safeguards against workplace violence. Music blasted out of jumbo speakers on Wednesday afternoon, as the roar of pro-union chants like “Say it loud, say it proud, New York is a union town” reverberated for several blocks. The union, which represents 34.3% of New York’s healthcare workforce, is made up of many immigrant workers, whose jobs span from registered nurses to home care workers and hospital cleaners.
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Mayor Mamdani Announces Sweeping Workplace Heat Safety Guidelines

Extreme heat is killing construction workers, with at least four deaths occurring in New York state due to heat-related causes in 2024 alone. With the state already experiencing several heat waves this year before the summer has gotten fully underway, projections show the city is only going to get hotter by midcentury. Most susceptible to heat-related injuries are the 1.4 million people in New York City who work outdoors for long periods of time, many of whom are immigrants of color. To combat the growing crisis, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an Executive Order on Monday to protect workers from the dangers of rising extreme heat.
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Luxury Clothing Brand Accused of Stealing $54,000 From Workers

Workers at the high-end Manhattan luxury brand SALON 1884 are used to sewing garments retailing for thousands of dollars. But in a new indictment from District Attorney Alvin Bragg, workers allege that the brand’s owner owes them much more: nearly $54,000 in stolen wages. On Wednesday, Manhattan District Attorney Bragg, in cooperation with the New York State Department of Labor, announced an indictment against SALON 1884 owner Andrea Marshall, 44, in connection with wage theft and exploitative working conditions.
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