Who gets to define America?
Immigrantly is Saadia Khan's weekly attempt to answer that — with artists, academics, cultural disruptors, and people whose ordinary lives contain something extraordinary.
Saadia has worked in human rights, built a media company, and spent twelve years becoming an American — which is a long time to think about a question most people never ask.
We go past the surface to the messy beauty of belonging. Identity is powerful, but unchecked it becomes an ego trap — so every episode sits with the nuance, the humor, and the contradictions of what it means to be from somewhere and of somewhere else.
Real talk, never flattened. New episodes every Tuesday.
To join this fun, thoughtful, and inclusive community, subscribe!
Producer & Host: Saadia Khan
Editorial Review: Shei Yu
Content Writers: Michaela Strauther, Bobak Afshari, Rainier Harris, Adiba Hussain & Saadia Khan
Sound Design & Content Editor: Haziq Ahmad Farid, Paroma Chakravarty, Steve Martin, Lou Raskin
Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson
Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us! Don’t forget to subscribe!
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Immigrantly is an Immigrantly Media production.
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9/11 at 25: A Firefighter's Daughter on the Mamdani Petition, Guantánamo, and the Script of Grief
Épisode 363
mardi 8 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:00:37
More than 95,000 people have signed a petition asking the organizers of the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero to reconsider whether Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of New York City, should attend. Liz Miller's answer has traveled further than most: "Mayor Mamdani is not a terrorist."
Elizabeth Miller (Liz) was six when her father, FDNY firefighter Douglas Miller of Rescue 5, went into the South Tower and did not come home. Today she is the project director of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a group of 9/11 family members who have spent more than two decades being called naive, unpatriotic, and worse for opposing torture, the death penalty, and the wars fought in their loved ones' names.
In this episode of Immigrantly's 9/11 at 25 series, Saadia Khan talks with Liz about the letter she wrote to President Bush at age 11, her six trips to Guantánamo Bay to observe the 9/11 military commission, her friendship with a former detainee who was held for 14 years and never charged, and why she does not believe the trial will happen on the date the judge just set. They also talk about the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where Liz once worked, and what it leaves out of the national story: the surveillance, the hate crimes, and the wars that followed.
Two people with very different reasons to dread the first eleven days of September, and a conversation about who is allowed to grieve, who is expected to, and who gets called a hero.
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
9/11 at 25: Guantánamo Never Closed. Now It Holds Immigrants
Épisode 355
jeudi 3 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:00:03
Twenty-five years after September 11th, Guantánamo Bay is still open. Fifteen men are still held there. Six have never been charged with anything at all. And on August 26, 2026, a military judge finally set a trial date for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three co-defendants: June 5, 2028, nearly 27 years after the attacks.
In the first episode of Immigrantly's three-part 9/11 at 25 series, Saadia Khan sits down with Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who has litigated Guantánamo cases since 2002. He filed the first habeas petition on behalf of detainees when no one in Washington would carry the papers to the courthouse. He was one of the first lawyers allowed onto the base.
This conversation covers what actually built Guantánamo and what has kept it standing through four presidencies:
• Why the first people held at Guantánamo were not Muslims, but Black Haitian refugees intercepted at sea in 1991• How the U.S. filled the prison using leaflets and $5,000 bounties, not battlefield capture• The domestic sweeps of South Asian and Arab Muslim men, held in secret immigration hearings with their names erased from the public docket• Mohammed al-Qahtani, a schizophrenic man held roughly two decades, much of it in solitary confinement, and Abu Zubaydah, the first man waterboarded, still never charged• Guled Duran, cleared for release by six agencies, whose habeas petition has sat with a judge for a decade• Why the torture evidence argument is not the reason these cases never went to trial• And what it means that the Trump administration flew roughly 500 immigrants to Guantánamo between February and June 2025, at a reported cost of about $100,000 per person per day
The machinery built in 2001 was never dismantled. Machinery that isn't dismantled gets used again on somebody else.
Saadia's take: she is not here to acknowledge the anniversary. She is here to audit it.
Learn more about the Center for Constitutional Rights at ccrjustice.org, or follow @ccrjustice.
Next Tuesday: a woman whose father, a firefighter, went into the towers and did not come out. She was six. She has spent the years since objecting to what this country did to Muslims in her family's name.
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What Investors Say After Founders Leave the Room with Erika Lucas
Épisode 354
mardi 25 août 2026 • Durée 51:00
Erika Lucas spent years inside private equity and venture capital, the rooms that decide who gets funded in America. Then she left to build what goes around them. In this episode, she tells Saadia Khan exactly what investors say about founders once they’ve walked out.
Erika was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and came to rural Oklahoma at 13 with her mother and sister, speaking no English. She went back. She built a career in Mexico, returned to the U.S., ran foreign direct investment for the State of Oklahoma, became a private equity partner—and then walked away to co-found StitchCrew, which has brought capital and networks to hundreds of founders the system overlooks. She also founded VEST, a peer network for women professionals, and VEST Her Ventures, a fund backing women-led companies in the care economy. Her TEDx talk, America's Trillion Dollar Blindspot, argues the money in this country is pointed the wrong way.
She and Saadia get into the part most founder conversations skip: not how to pitch better, but who is on the other side of the table and why they keep writing checks to people who look like them. Erika's advice to founders is not what you'd expect from a former VC; she'd rather talk you out of raising venture at all.
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Find Erika Lucas on IG at @erika_07
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feed Drop: Did You Know the Girl Scouts Was Led by a Pakistani American? Meet Noorain Khan (from Pehchaan)
mardi 18 août 2026 • Durée 01:25:23
This week, we're sharing an episode from Pehchaan, hosted by Bilal Lakhani with co-host Ambreen Ali, a show about the Pakistani diaspora in the US, told by the people living it.
Their guest is Noorain Khan, who joined the Girl Scouts as a second grader in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and three decades later became the first Muslim American to lead the organization as National Board President. She's now Chief Innovation Officer at the Ford Foundation. They get into her path there, and the many layers of identity she's carried along the way.
New Immigrantly episode next week. And if you know someone who'd be a good fit for the show, send them our way.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Solo Episode: I Memorized the Civil War. Gettysburg Made Me Feel It
Épisode 353
mardi 11 août 2026 • Durée 20:45
There's a question on the U.S. citizenship test, question 74, that asks you to name one cause of the Civil War. The Government accepts three answers: slavery, economic reasons, states' rights. Saadia memorized all three. She passed. She became a citizen. And she never felt a single one of them.
Then, on a detour from a wedding in Maryland, she spent an afternoon at the Gettysburg museum in ninety-degree heat and found a fourth answer that will never make it onto a flashcard.
In this solo episode, Saadia walks through the exhibit that promised her the Civil War left America "a different people in everything," and traces what she actually found: an economy built on unpaid labor, a grievance politics that outlived the war that produced it, and two glass cases of brass buttons that map almost perfectly onto the country we still argue about every election cycle.
It's America's 250th year. The stories told at a birthday party are the flattering ones. This is the other kind, the immigrant's read on American history, from someone who waited twelve years for the passport and has no intention of being quiet with it.
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
UNRWA USA CEO Mara Kronenfeld on Gaza, Genocide And Jewish Identity
Épisode 352
mardi 4 août 2026 • Durée 01:00:32
UNRWA USA CEO Mara Kronenfeld is a Jewish American woman and the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor — and she leads the American nonprofit supporting the UN agency for Palestine refugees. In this episode of Immigrantly, Saadia Khan asks her what it costs to break the script.
Mara traces her path from Riverside, California to a Fulbright year in Damascus, where friendships built in Yarmouk refugee camp reshaped everything she thought she knew about the Arab world. She explains what UNRWA actually is, why it was designed to become obsolete, and answers the "UNRWA institutionalizes refugeehood" critique head-on. She describes conditions in Gaza after the October 2025 ceasefire that hasn't stopped the killing — rodents biting children in tents, women unable to afford or find menstrual supplies, a father tearing up his last clothes for his daughter.
She tells the story of her colleague Hani Almadhoun, who lost two brothers in Gaza — including Chef Mahmoud of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, killed by a drone as he walked to Kamal Adwan Hospital, the hospital whose director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya remains in Israeli detention without charge to this day.
And she takes apart the Board of Peace, which declared this summer that UNRWA has "no place" in Gaza's future and framed its work as perpetual aid dependency. Mara also answers the hardest one in her line of work — when a Palestinian says, "This is our story to lead," where does your voice end and theirs begin?
Mara Kronenfeld is the CEO of UNRWA USA. She speaks Arabic, holds a Master's in Middle East studies, and has worked across the Middle East for more than two decades. Learn more and donate at unrwausa.org. The NYC Gaza 5K returns to Prospect Park, Brooklyn on Sunday, October 11.
Keywords: UNRWA, Gaza, Palestinian refugees, Mara Kronenfeld, Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, Board of Peace, humanitarian aid, Jewish American identity, ceasefire, Immigrantly podcast
UNRWA USA's Gaza 5K page
Voices of UNRWA blog post: Inheriting Exile: The Identity Struggle of a Palestine Refugee
Voices of UNRWA blog post: Live from Gaza: Hani's Family
UNRWA USA FAQ page
UNRWA is still in Gaza, Washington Post, Dec. 2025
UNRWA USA donation page
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feed Drop: Occupy! Episode 1: The Invitation (by Future Hindsight)
mardi 28 juillet 2026 • Durée 43:02
In 2011, a handful of skeptical New Yorkers answer a call to Occupy Wall Street. What they find feels less like a protest and more like a glimpse of a different world—one where people openly share stories of debt, hardship, and frustration. They start to build an anti-capitalist village in a tiny Manhattan park — under the watchful eyes of police.
This is the first episode of Future Hindsight’s brand new 6-part series, OCCUPY! An Unfinished Uprising. Subscribe to Future Hindsight wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss a single episode!
Want to dive deeper? Listen to these episodes of Future Hindsight:
For a conversation on activism with a co-founder of Occupy Wall Street, tune in to this episode with Micah White: https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/micah-white
For a recap of how American capitalism evolved into what it is today, listen to this episode with Kurt Andersen: https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/americas-evil-geniuses-kurt-andersen
On solidarity and mutual aid, listen to this conversation with Manuel Pastor: https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/solidarity-and-mutuality-manuel-pastor
Credits:
Host / Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer / Writer: Maria Luisa Tucker
Audio Producer: Zack Travis
Additional production help: Mia Warren, Erika Gjada, Megan Detrie, Lizzie Jacobs, and Ilya Magazanin
Archival research: Marisa Holmes
Archival material courtesy of: Occupy Wall Street Media Working Group.
Original music: Rude Mechanical Orchestra and Puge Ruhe
Special thanks to T.J. Raphael, Lauren Passell, Arielle Nissenblatt, and Kate Blumenfeld for being our first listeners and sounding boards, and to Tom Koenig for his support.
Distributed by PRX
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My First Guest Returns: Sahar Saleem on Corporate Exits And Somatic Healing
Épisode 351
mardi 21 juillet 2026 • Durée 53:23
Seven years ago, Sahar Saleem was the first-ever guest on Immigrantly, talking about her creative marketing career at PepsiCo. She's back, and everything has changed. In this episode, we talk about leaving a corporate "dream job," breaking into screenwriting in LA right as the writers' strike hit, the quiet blacklisting of pro-Palestinian voices in Hollywood, and her pilot Cash, about a Pakistani American memory archeologist. Then, the unexpected turn: somatic therapy, epigenetics, and how trauma lives in the body across generations. Sahar now leads Soma Sahar, a healing practice weaving somatic embodiment, ancestral reflection, and creative ritual. A conversation about privilege, purpose, and coming home to yourself.
Sahar’s Personal / Writing IG:
@saharsaleem
Subconscious Glass on Substack
Somatic Coaching & Healing -
@somasahar_ www.saharsaleem.com right now, but starting in mid-August it'll be www.somasahar.com
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Darializa Avila Chevalier Refuses to Fit in Your Box
Épisode 350
mardi 14 juillet 2026 • Durée 51:08
"No one fits into these types of boxes." Darializa Avila Chevalier has spent her whole life being asked to pick one: Black or Latina, Dominican or American, organizer or politician. Two weeks ago, the 32-year-old from Harlem broke the biggest box of all, defeating a five-term incumbent to win the Democratic nomination in New York's 13th Congressional District, with no corporate money and no party machine. If she wins in November, she'll be the first Dominican woman ever elected to Congress.
In this episode of Immigrantly, Saadia Khan goes beyond the headlines with Darializa: growing up the daughter of working-class immigrants across Florida's many Americas, arriving at Columbia University as a low-income Afro-Latina student who didn't know office hours were a thing, and how campus organizing turned into a life of movement-building. They get into the surreal weight of making history while being picked apart in public, housing for all, abolishing ICE, the Democratic establishment's meltdown — and why dissent might be the most patriotic act of all
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Who Gets to Be American? A History of Birthright Citizenship on Trial (July 2025)
mardi 7 juillet 2026 • Durée 50:05
The Supreme Court just upheld birthright citizenship, striking down Trump's executive order in a 6-3 ruling that leans directly on a case 130 years in the making. We're re-releasing our deep dive into Wong Kim Ark — the Chinese American son of immigrants who won this exact fight at the Supreme Court in 1898 — because Chief Justice Roberts built this week's decision on Wong's story, by name.
In this episode: the history of the 14th Amendment, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Julia Lynch's 1844 citizenship case, and how "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" has been the most contested phrase in American immigration law for over a century. Plus a new opening and closing segment breaking down this week's ruling, the rejected "domicile" argument, and why the fight isn't actually over.
Birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment. American identity. Immigration history. All still unfinished business.
Show Notes
Episode Summary
Originally released in 2025, this episode traces the legal and racial history of birthright citizenship in America — from the Naturalization Act of 1790 through Wong Kim Ark (1898), Lynch v. Clarke (1844), and Trump's January 2025 executive order. This re-release adds new bookend segments covering the Supreme Court's June 30, 2026 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which upheld birthright citizenship 6-3.
What's New in This Re-Release
Breakdown of the Supreme Court's ruling and Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion
Why the administration's "domicile" argument failed
Fact-check: can Congress end birthright citizenship by passing a law? (No — here's why)
What comes next for immigration policy after this ruling
Topics Covered
The 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)
Lynch v. Clarke (1844)
The Chinese Exclusion Act and the Naturalization Act of 1790
Dred Scott v. Sandford and its legacy
Trump's 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship
Trump v. Barbara (2026)
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Michaela Strauther I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
BOYOT (Belong On Your Own Terms) is the next step. It’s our new app, designed to help you think through identity, culture, ambition, relationships, and the stories we carry with guided reflections, prompts, and frameworks developed over years of conversations on this show.
It’s thoughtful. It’s challenging. And honestly, it’s the kind of space many of us wish existed earlier in our lives.
If you’re ready to go deeper than the podcast, subscribe to BOYOT and start the journey.
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices