MANSOOR
SANYA
I’m a freelance journalist based in New York City, covering civil liberties, immigration and tech. I just wrapped up six months reporting on tech at The Guardian, where I wrote about surveillance, AI, and the uprising against data centers.
Before working at The Guardian, I published stories in New York Magazine, The Cut, The Intercept, The Associated Press, Acacia Magazine, Hell Gate, Documented, The Center for Public Integrity, The Miami Herald, The Texas Tribune and the Dallas Morning News.
As a reporter at TIME Magazine from 2019 - 2024, I reported hundreds of news articles, including two cover stories on Palestine and an award-winning series of immigration stories about New York City’s migrant crisis, Afghan asylum seekers and a glitchy federal app that kept migrants stranded at the border.
I’ve spoken about the ‘war on terror’ at the 2025 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, was selected as one of the National Press Foundation’s statehouse reporting fellows in 2023 and made it on to Southern Living’s ‘Southerners of the Year’ list for writing a story that helped raise $137,000 for the Dallas Independent School District.
I’m originally from Kashmir and grew up in India, England and Singapore, before moving to the U.S., in 2012. My journalism jobs have taken me to Dallas, Austin, Miami, Atlanta and D.C. I love playing soccer and help run an Urdu poetry collective called Rumuuz.
If you’re an editor or a potential source, you can reach me at sanyamansoor94@gmail.com
TIME MAGAZINEAt TIME, I reported two cover stories on Palestine. In 2024, I won the South Asian Journalist Association’s ‘Outstanding Range of Work’ Award for a series of immigration stories in TIME about the expiration of Title 42, New York City’s migrant crisis and Afghans who crossed the Southern border. I visited overcrowded shelters in New York city, pressed NYC officials on their inability to get migrants an ID and reported a scoop on how the U.S. was not providing exceptions for emergency cases after Title 42 expired.
I also told nuanced stories about Muslim Americans. I reported on how the FBI spied on Muslims in California after 9/11—interviewing traumatized Muslim Americans, as well as the informant at the center of it all. I followed the case, as it made it’s way through the Supreme Court. and also covered the experiences of Muslim prisoners who say they weren’t getting enough food during Ramadan, as well as the killing of four Shia men in Albuquerque.
Photo Credit: Whitten Sabbatini for TIME
The DALLas Morning NewsI began my journalism career writing front-page education stories for the Dallas Morning News. A piece on how a lack of clean clothes for young students affects their self esteem and can lead to absenteeism resonated deeply with readers. My reporting found that a washer/dryer set is one of the Dallas Independent School District’s most requested items. Donors contributed $137,000 as a result of the article—and Southern Living magazine listed me as one of 50 Southerners of the Year in 2016 because of the money the article helped raise.
Photo Credit: Nathan Hunsinger for The Dallas Morning News