This week on The Banh Mi Chronicles, I sit down with Katrina Pham, a Vietnamese American journalist with Borderless Magazine, a Chicago-based, immigrant-centered news publication.

Katrina shares her reflections on the recent ICE raids in Chicago and the weight of reporting on stories that directly impact the safety and livelihoods of our neighbors. We dive deep into how the digital media landscape has shifted and why “extractive” journalism no longer works. Instead, Katrina explains the rigorous work of building long-term, trusting relationships with the communities being covered.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Reporting on the Frontlines: Katrina’s firsthand reflections on documenting the ICE raids in Chicago.

• The Evolution of Digital Media: How the current landscape affects the way immigrant stories are told—and who gets to tell them.

• Community Journalism as Advocacy: What it means to practice “immigrant-centered” reporting in 2026.

• Building Radical Trust: The strategies Borderless Magazine uses to ensure sources feel seen, safe, and respected.

Katrina is a multimedia journalist whose focus is on race and social justice reporting. Most recently, she’s worked for The Yappie as a staff writer and newsletter contributor. There, she reported on solutions for inaccessible mental health care for Southeast Asian American refugees, among other topics relating to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Before Borderless, she interned for ABC 7 Chicago’s Race & Culture News team, connecting with community organizations in Chicago to pitch stories for the newsroom.

Katrina was born in Chicago, where both her parents settled after arriving in the United States as refugees from Vietnam following the end of the war. These experiences inform Katrina’s work, and she cares deeply about social justice issues.

Borderless Magazine is reimagining immigration journalism for a more just and equitable future.

As a nonprofit and nonpartisan news outlet, Borderless:

• Reports and publishes stories in English and Spanish

• Mentors emerging journalists in our Pathways program

• Gives journalists from other news outlets the tools they need to report on immigration issues fairly and accurately through our Immigration Reporting Lab

Borderless was named “The Future of Journalism” in the 2024 national Next Challenge.

Follow Borderless on these platforms:

Instagram: borderless_mag

Facebook

Website

TikTok

YouTube

Bio:About Borderless Magazine:

The countdown reaches its finale!

In this episode, I’m joined once again by my friend and pop culture enthusiast, Anjali Misra, to wrap up our journey through the top 25 songs of the 21st century. While Part 1 set the stage, Part 2 dives into the “Chill-Out Chronicles”—the tracks that provided the vibe, the soul, and the soundtrack to our lives from #18 all the way to #25.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Final Eight: A track-by-track breakdown of the remaining songs on the list.

• Genre-Bending Favorites: Why these specific artists stood the test of time while others faded into the background.

• Nostalgia vs. Quality: How our perspective on these 2000s hits has shifted over the last two decades.

• Snubs & Honorable Mentions: The songs that almost made the cut (and why it was so hard to choose).

Tracks #18-25 (No Ranking Order)

1. Summer Boy - Lady Gaga (2009)

2. Losing You - Solange (2012)

3. Humble - Kendrick Lamar (2017)

4. Roses - Outkast (2003)

5. Toxicity - System of a Down (2001)

6. Stay - Rihanna (2012)

7. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand (2004)

8. Hometown Glory - Adele (2008)

   
   

Connect with the Show:

• Subscribe to the Substack: Banh Mi Bites

• Follow on Instagram: @banhmi_chronicles

• Support the Podcast: Share this post with a fellow 2000s music lover!

The world is a lot right now. Between the headlines and the collective burnout, we all need a second to just pause and breathe.

In the first of this two-episode special of the“Chill-Out Chronicles” edition of the pod, I’m joined by my good friend and resident pop culture nerd Anjali Misra. We are temporarily stepping away from the doomscrolling to get into a rabbit hole on another topic: What is Randy’s favorite songs of the 2000s? (I decided not to rank them in order).

From my exploration into Indie Rock like Foster the People, MGMT to pop icons like Janet Jackson and Britney Spears to the emerging days of KPop like Brown Eyed Girls and 2NE1, we do a deep dive into the legacy and impact of these songs, and from the artist(s) who created them.

Spoiler Alert:

Songs discussed on this episode (Pt. 1):

Rock With U —Janet Jackson

Zero–Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Hung Up—Madonna

Cut to the Feeling—Carly Rae Jepsen

Electric Feel—MGMT

Toxic–Britney Spears

Tears Dry on Their Own–Amy Winehouse

Espresso–Sabrina Carpenter

Love At First Sight—Kylie Minogue

Helena Beat—Foster the People

Game of Love–Michelle Branch & Santana

All Night–Beyonce

Treasure–Bruno Mars

Abracadabra—Brown Eyed Girls

Fire–2NE1

Be Sweet—Japanese Breakfast

Lady Marmalade—Christina Aguilera, P!nk, Mya, Lil’ Kim, and Missy Elliott

We know everyone has that one song they’re ready to fight for. After you listen, drop a comment below: What is the one 2000s track we definitely missed?

Trigger/Content Warning: Kala and Randy discussing examples of state-sanctioned v*olence from ICE, law enforcement, and government agents

Episode recorded on Tuesday, March 24th, 2026; 3:30 pm US Central Time

In this emergency episode, I connect with Kala (He/They) aka “Your Protest Safety Kuya” to address the current wave of ICE raids happening at U.S. airports. He dives deep into the changing landscape for travelers—whether local, domestic, or international—and provides essential strategies for protecting yourself and advocating for others in the face of state-sanctioned v*olence.

Key Discussion Points

* The Current Landscape: Understanding the deployment of ICE and CBP agents at airports and what to expect in the coming weeks.

* Know Your Rights While Traveling: Practical “dos and don’ts” when ICE is in the vicinity, including how to handle searches of smartphones, laptops, and GPS trackers.

* Advocacy in Action: How to safely support and document (via photo/video) if you witness someone being searched or harmed by law enforcement.

* Responsible Tech Use: Navigating face-recognition features and social media safety while participating in movement work.

* Inclusive Safety: Specific considerations for travelers who are undocumented, neurodivergent, or living with disabilities.

* Movement Security: Preparing emergency contacts, legal counsel, and paperwork for those publicly outspoken against government actions.

Collective Community Effort

This conversation emphasizes that safety is not just an individual task but a collective community effort. By staying informed without being alarmist, we can provide the nuance and context needed to protect each other and build a more resilient movement.

Bio:

Kalaya’an Mendoza (He/They) is a Frontline Safety and Security specialist, human rights defender and direct action trainer with over 25 years of on-the-ground experience. He is the co-founder of Across Frontlines, a grassroots collective that works alongside frontline communities around the world from Aotearoa (Ah-o-teya-rho-a) to Turtle Island in their struggle for justice and self determination.

Accompanying Links:

Digital Security Checklists for Activists: https://activistchecklist.org/

Protest Safety Resources: https://linktr.ee/kalamendoza

Resources:

* https://activistchecklist.org/travel/

* https://www.nilc.org/resources/community-alert-immigration-arrests-at-airports/

* https://immigrantsrising.org/resource/guide-for-undocumented-individuals-traveling-in-the-u-s/

Tools:

* https://activistchecklist.org/travel/

Also check out previous episode of the podcast with Jung Han on Protest/Civilian Safety:

• Full episode: https://substack.com/@banhmibites/p-175159957
• Minisode: https://substack.com/@banhmibites/p-175678613

Bánh Mì Bites is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

TW/CW: Mentions of child ab*se, ICE v*olence, and other state-sanctioned v*olence. There was a brief mention of the late union-leader, Cesar Chavez during the recording of the episode on (3/10) before the recent allegations of s*xual assa*lt against Chavez came to light.

A great honor to bring in Joon “J.S.” Park to the podcast. J.S. is a Korean American based in Tampa, FL, and currently serves as a hospital chaplain. He’s a published author behind recent books such as 2024’s “As Long As You Need: Permission to Grieve” and 2026’s “We Are Made of Us.” He runs his IG account under @ JSPark3000 where he shares his knowledge and experience on grief and loss, as well as unlearning toxic masculinity and intergenerational trauma. We discuss these intimate experiences and how this is tied into his work as a chaplain and his deeper involvement in social justice causes. J.S. talks about why it was important for him to memorialize civilians k*lled in Gaza, under ICE custody, and other state-sanctioned violence through his social media.

J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, published author, and online educator. For nearly eleven years he has been an interfaith chaplain at a 1000+ bed hospital that is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center. His role includes grief support, attending every death, trauma, and Code Blue, and end-of-life care.

J.S. has been interviewed by CNN, NPR, CBS News, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Bay News 9, and FOX13 Tampa Bay, among others, for his work in death and dying. He is the author of As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve, published by W Publishing of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, and an upcoming book on contending with our family-of-origin and family dynamics, published by Tarcher Books of Penguin Random House.

J.S. served for three years as a chaplain at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the east coast. J.S. is a board certified chaplain and has a MDiv completed in 2010 and a BA in Psychology. He also has a sixth-degree black belt.

J.S. currently lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife, a nurse practitioner, and their daughter and son.

Instagram: jspark3000

Bio:

What does discovering an author who shares your similar lived experiences mean to you? I sit down with my friend and Khmer American content creator, Sophia Lee based out in the Boston area. She is the founder of the IG account BeyondtheMekong, which highlights books and writings by Khmer diasporic authors and other Asian American/diasporic authors. Sophia shares with me about her love of reading and the joy of finding Cambodian and Asian authors, and what it means to highlight those voices and find connections with other fellow Asian bookstagrammers. We discuss some of our favorite readings from Khmer authors and so much more in this episode!

Books & Authors mentioned on this episode:

Ma and Me by Putsata Reang

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So

Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia

Sambath Meas

Vaddey Ratner

First, They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithy Him

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

Human Axe by Han Kang

Lurlene McDaniel

Put it on Record w/ Dr. Sokunthary Svay

Slow Noodles by Chantha Nguon

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Remembering Water: a Memoir of Departure and Return by Tuan Phan

Bio:

A second-generation Cambodian-American and the daughter of genocide survivors, Sophia Lee aims to bridge the gap between readers and Cambodian diasporic authors, and to explore the importance of heritage language reclamation for Asian American identity via social media.

Sophia has served the Cambodian-American community for over 10 years. She co-authored the Cambodian Texans chapter in ASIAN TEXANS: OUR HISTORIES AND OUR LIVES, and helped organize the More than a Number exhibit, featuring Cambodian Genocide survivor stories, at the Lynn Museum. Her writing is featured in the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association’s The Still House Zine, and you can find her at BeyondtheMekong on Instagram and Substack.

Award-winning, critically acclaimed queer Korean author and literary translator Anton Hur makes a special appearance on this episode from Australia, where he’s currently doing his residency. I’ve known Anton for the past 10+ years, and have watched his ascending rise in the Korean and Western literary world. I asked him questions about his debut fiction novel, Toward Eternity, and what he has learned as an author after years of translating successful Korean literature for an English-speaking audience. We chatted about the art of translation in literature, AI’s consequential effects on writers, the responsibility of speaking out on social issues, Palestine, and anti-authoritarianism, Mariah Carey’s legacy, and more. Check this episode out, and follow Anton Hur’s work!

Bio:

Anton Hur is the author of Toward Eternity (HarperVia) and No One Told Me Not To (Across Books). He was born in Stockholm and currently resides in Seoul. He studied law and psychology at Korea University and specialized in Victorian poetry at the Seoul National University Graduate School English program under Dr. Nancy Jiwon Cho. He won a PEN Translates grant for his translation of The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae and a PEN/Heim grant for Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, the latter of which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

His translation of Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City was also longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, making him the third translator in history to be double-longlisted in the same year, and he also judged the prize in 2025. Love in the Big City was also longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award, which Anton also judged in 2024. His translations of Kyung-Sook Shin’s Violets and Lee Seong-bok’s Indeterminate Inflorescence were consecutively longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. His other translations include Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer, Violets, and I Went to See My Father, Sung-Il Kim’s Bleeding Empire series, Kim Choyeop’s If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, and Baek Sehee’s international bestseller I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki and its sequel. His co-translation of Beyond the Story: 10-Year History of BTS debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

He has taught at the British Centre for Literary Translation, the Ewha University Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, and the Bread Loaf Translators Conference. Anton is represented by Safae El-Ouahabi at Rogers Coleridge & White in London.

Website: AntonHur.com

Instagram: AntonHur

Bluesky: @ antonhur.com

I’ve known Travis C. Lau since the beginning of the pandemic, as we follow each other on social media. My interview with him for this episode was the first real conversation I’ve had with him. From the moment I hit record, we hit it off like long-lost siblings discovering new things about each other. In this episode, Travis looks back on his complicated relationship with his parents and his relationship with the queer community during his college days, and how that affected his relationship to his own queer Chinese identity. We chatted about his poetry and how his disability and neurodivergence have impacted his work and a deeper understanding of himself. Travis talked about his friendship with the late Alice Wong, a disabled Asian American disability activist and author, and how he wants to remember her. Also, he treats us to a reading of one of his poems.

Travis Chi Wing Lau (he/him/his) is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His research and teaching focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, health humanities, and disability studies. Alongside his scholarship, he has been published widely in venues of public scholarship and poetry, including three chapbooks--The Bone Setter (Damaged Goods Press, 2019), Paring (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Vagaries (Fork Tine Press, 2022)--and a full-length collection of poems, What’s Left Is Tender (Harbor Editions, 2025). He is also co-editor of Every Place on the Map Is Disabled, an anthology of disability poetry and poetics, published with Northwestern University Press in 2026. He was the winner of the Christopher Hewitt Award for Poetry (2019), recipient of the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s Artists Elevated Award in Literature (2024), and the Ohio Arts Council's Artists with Disabilities Access Program Grant (2025). [travisclau.com]

IG: travisclau

Bio:

TW/CW: Discussion of G*nocide, State-Sanctioned V*olence, Racism

Jenny Chan, Executive Director of Pacific Atrocities Education (PAE), joins me as a guest for this week’s episode as we discuss the many parts of Asian American history during the 19th century to pre-World War 2 that have been forgotten in US History, and the racialized harm and v*olence that Asian Americans experienced during that time. Jenny dives into the Asian Pacific Wars that were happening during WW2, specifically imperial Japan’s atrocities, which include the Nanking Massacre, the Bataan Death March, and the Korean and Chinese comfort women. She brings up how necessary it is to share all of this history to gain a deeper understanding of what we are all seeing today in the US and across the globe. Tune in to learn more about this discussion.

Jenny Chan is the director of Pacific Atrocities Education (PAE), a San Francisco-based nonprofit she established in 2014 to raise awareness of World War II atrocities in the Asia-Pacific region, such as the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and the "comfort women" system, through books, videos, and digitized archives that have engaged over 800,000 online visitors annually. Under her leadership, PAE's internship program—offering opportunities in research, community outreach, digital archiving, and oral history—has profoundly shaped participants' careers, with several former interns advancing to become professors and scholars.

Visit Pacific Atrocities Education

Instagram: pacificatrocitiesedu

Facebook:Pacific Atrocities Education

Bio:For More:

TW/CW: ICE Raid violence, imprisonment, and deportation

Recorded on 2/5/2026, 9:05 am

Quyen Dinh, Executive Director of SEARAC (The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center)joins me as a guest for this emergency episode regarding the current ICE raids happening in Minnesota and across the US. In Minneapolis-St Paul, ICE and CBP have been doubling down efforts to detain residents, including those with legal status, and have been under major scrutiny for the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The SE Asian communities, home to many Hmong, Lao, Cambodian, and Vietnamese residents, have faced threats from ICE and CBP agents, and the deportations among that particular group have escalated since the Trump 2.0 administration.

We talk about the challenges and uncertainty with SE Asians who are being detained and going through the deportation process. We bring up Parady La, a Cambodian man who died under ICE custody earlier this year, and how his family is still searching for answers as to why he was denied medical care before his death. Quyen shares insights into what SEARAC and other SE Asian community organizations are doing in response to the ICE raids and ways to help protect their communities. Resources & Additional Information:

• SEARAC's website, FB.IG. BlueSky
  
• SEARAC resources for SEA refugees facing deportation page
  
• Mutual aid efforts:
  
• Minnesota
• AAPIs United in the Twin Cities
• Hmong American Partnership’s mutual aid efforts 
  
• Other mutual aidfundraisers.
  
• In Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos
• Collective Freedom
• Ba Lo Project

• Know Your Rights materials in Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, or Vietnamese, or other Southeast Asian languages, you can visit MN8’s website. Click here for written resources or here for videos.

• SEAFN Deportation Resources