Tanvi Misra

Tanvi Misra - Type Media Center The Fellowship Program provides emerging and established journalists the support needed to write on complex social and political issues. Our fellows form a unique community of thinkers and writers and...

Doing investigative fellowship with the good folks at Type Media, covering-- no surprise--immigration. Pls reach out if you have investigative tips (real tips! pls don't give me story ideas, i've been on this beat for a decade!)

I'm at tanvim.05 on signal.

typemediacenter.org/fellows/tanv...

Guild member detained by ICE in Minnesota January 16, 2026 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Dylan Manshack, Comms | dmanshack@cwa-union.org | 202-445-4033 Member remains in ICE custody in Texas MINNEAPOLIS — On Friday, January 9, ICE arrested a member of our union, the Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37002, as part of Operation Metro Surge. While the circumstances of his arrest are not clear, we know he has been transferred to an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas, where he is awaiting action on his petition for habeas corpus. The Guild is not publicly identifying the member out of concern for his family’s safety, but he is a father, a husband, and a staff member at a Minneapolis non-profit organization. He is a steward in our union and an advocate for all workers. And he is one of dozens of Minnesota union members who have been detained in recent weeks. The Department of Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests since the surge began in December, according to an MPR News report. But the agency has not provided details about the people arrested, such as how many were charged with a crime, how many face deportation, and how many were subsequently released. “The Minnesota Newspaper and Communications Guild stands with our member and his family as they face an uncertainty that is all too common in our state right now,” local president Nick Woltman said. “Like all Minnesota workers, our members deserve to feel safe in their communities both on and off the job.” “The detention of a Guild member in Minnesota amidst the chaos created by DHS is heartbreaking and infuriating,” said NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss. “My heart goes out to his family, who are now without their father and husband. As a union, we commit to fight for each other as stewards of our communities—especially in times as dark as this, while federal agents continue to target working families.” ALT TEXT CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

ICE has kidnapped one of my MN News Guild siblings

Sanctuary City | Tanvi Misra Come January, New York City will be led by an immigrant—and, in a series of firsts, by a Muslim Indian American from Uganda. This kind of representation

reading this by @tanvi.bsky.social 'as the new mayor takes office, the bigger question is not what he symbolizes for immigrant communities but what benefits he might deliver for them if he can realize his vision of an affordable city.'

What Happens When You Don’t Belong Anywhere? More than 50 Bhutanese men with criminal records have been deported back to the country they fled — and swiftly deported out of it.

Our immigration system is based on criminalization & punishment, and so called third country deportations are just one way Trump is scaling this system to even harsher extremes. We spoke w/ @nymag.com about how double punishment works. Read the story by @tanvi.bsky.social: nymag.com/intelligence...

Adam Federman, Tanvi Misra, and Kathryn Joyce: Lessons from One Year of Reporting on Trump

As we wrap up year one of Trump’s second administration, we invited @adamfederman.bsky.social, @tanvi.bsky.social, and @kathrynajoyce.bsky.social back to the Backstory to talk about how the year has gone and how they think things will develop going forward.

open.spotify.com/episode/2UOo...

”Yet immigrants, of course, are not a monolith. They have taken different paths to America and had different experiences upon arrival—and they tell themselves different stories about their own luck and circumstance.” Important read/reminder 👇

Sanctuary City | Tanvi Misra Come January, New York City will be led by an immigrant—and, in a series of firsts, by a Muslim Indian American from Uganda. This kind of representation

New year, new mayor, new essay in @nybooks.com about what the Mamdani mayoral era might mean for the city's immigrant communities:
www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

Sanctuary City | Tanvi Misra Come January, New York City will be led by an immigrant—and, in a series of firsts, by a Muslim Indian American from Uganda. This kind of representation

New year, new mayor, new essay in @nybooks.com about what the Mamdani mayoral era might mean for the city's immigrant communities:
www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

All the things I wrote ...in 2025

I revived my dead substack and did a roundup of everything i wrote last year: all my essays and investigations and magazine pieces on immigration, the topic I've covered for a decade at this point. PLS READ & SUBSCRIBE

substack.com/home/post/p-...

The legacy of Chicano artist Jose Lozano | KCRW The late painter's art is featured across Southern California.

MY LATEST @kcrw.com ‬⁩ ORANGE COUNTY LINE: The legacy of Chicano artist Jose Lozano. Share, porfas!

What Happens When You Don’t Belong Anywhere? More than 50 Bhutanese men with criminal records have been deported back to the country they fled — and swiftly deported out of it.

I wrote about the double-triple punishment given to an immigrant who had served his sentence for a serious crime, who was deported to a country where he was likely to be persecuted, and then quickly ejected from that country & rendered stateless.

nymag.com/intelligence...

For years, ICE has used the latest surveillance technology to target immigrants, now it’s using this technology to target anti-ICE protesters. This is a serious threat to Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights.

This entire grift relies on convincing people that they don't know how to do the things they have always known how to do, and ironically, if it works, we will, in a very short amount of time, forget how to do all the things we have always known how to do.

!! Comms folks, PR ppl, press officers, public liaisons, spokespersons!!

Please put my new email on your press lists: reporting@tanvimisra.com.

I'm also on tanvi.misra@protonmail.com for secure tips and tanvim.05 on Signal.

(Pls delete/ swap out any other emails on file!)

What Happens When You Don’t Belong Anywhere? More than 50 Bhutanese men with criminal records have been deported back to the country they fled — and swiftly deported out of it.

Read @tanvi.bsky.social on migrants who have been rendered stateless — deported by the US then exiled by the countries of their birth — and the black hole in which they find themselves nymag.com/intelligence...

What Happens When You Don’t Belong Anywhere? More than 50 Bhutanese men with criminal records have been deported back to the country they fled — and swiftly deported out of it.

I appreciate that @tanvi.bsky.social highlights a deported refugee, now stateless, who committed a crime all of us find egregious

Deportations in no way address harm or sexual violence and the immigrants' rights space needs to move away from respectability politics

nymag.com/intelligence...

ICYMI!!!!!!

You can believe he deserved it or that he didn’t. That’s up to you.

I experienced sexual assault when I was around the same age as the victim hurt of this man in my story, so l know damage it does. Still think it’s worth questioning the lack of due process and a system that disproportionately punishes some people (in this case, doubly, triply) — and not others.

I knew I’d get some of this. It IS journalism, actually, to go beyond simplistic notions of good and evil that rely on a high school idea of morality & question how systems work against people who are very sympathetic as well as those who have done grave harm, because both those people are people.

Why Did DHS Send a Russian Exile to Costa Rica? How Trump’s third-country removal strategy forced an asylum-seeking family to start over — in Monteverde.

Big thanks to the editors and fact checkers at @nymag.com for investing in the "stranded" -- See the other two installments here:

nymag.com/intelligence...

nymag.com/intelligence...

But I am glad we did it bc as journalists (and i tell my students this) it's important to do stories that make us uncomfortable, lean into complexity, and represent people who are flawed and who may have done bad things as well as those who haven't. There are no perfect victims.

On a personal note, this story was difficult to do at times, logistically, to have multiple conversations in Hindi with someone on the other side of the world who lives in a shadow space -- a camp -- and emotionally (in part, bc of my own experiences with sexual assault).

Many have been deported after serving out their full sentences — “What we call double jeopardy or double punishment,” said Jeff Migliozzi, communications director of Freedom for Immigrants. Those who are thrown into what Migliozzi refers to as the “prison-to-ICE pipeline” tend to be long-term legal immigrants — permanent residents and immigrant-visa holders — who have spent a substantial amount of time and established deep roots in the U.S. Effectively, the system is “punishing people twice, or in this case, even three times, based on where someone was born,” he said. “That is the deciding factor here — if they were born in the United States, they would otherwise be going home.”

he abolitionist organization Freedom for Immigrants is against such deportations, given that marginalized groups are already disproportionately policed and imprisoned for crimes.

If the justice system "works," then why is a deportion and, in this case, this permanent stripping of status (and, by extension) human rights needed? Is that punishment fair or proportionate? Is it the best way to hold people accountable for the harm they did?

A key question the story raises is about the moral consequence of deporting people who have done their time -- and doing so in the way the Trump admin has, by rushing due process and sending people to third countries at a scale never seen before.

If they had wanted to punish him further for his crime, the authorities should have tacked on extra time to his sentence, Subedi said, instead of deporting him. He is losing hope that he will ever return. Waiting two-to-three years for the political winds in America to change feels like “a long time in this place,” he said. “By then, everyone will forget. I don’t think anyone will want to help us.”

They are living on private donations from friends and family abroad -- and gathered by local human rights groups as the world moves on.

They are languishing in the shadows. One deportee recently died by suicide in Nepal. Another one, who came with Aasis, is so depressed he can't leave his home. They have no status, no prospects, no way to make money. Aasis and his father have been strained hosting other deportees in recent months.

Aasis smuggled himself back into Nepal where he grew up in a refugee camp, and is now stateless. Nepal (in a tumultuous govt transition) has ruled that he and others are to be fined and can be deported to Bhutan or...ironically, America, the only place they had legal documents.