Stateless: A Rohingya family finds community in Chicago

Editor’s note: This episode was recorded before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on birthright citizenship. On June 30, 2026, in Trump v. Barbara, the Court struck down the executive order 6–3, affirming that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. The concerns Fatima describes reflect the uncertainty her community lived with while that case was pending. For stateless families like hers, the ruling does not resolve their own lack of citizenship — that path remains closed. Twenty-six-year-old Fatima is a stateless Rohingya Muslim who fled Myanmar in 2017. A state-sanctioned campaign of genocide against Rohingya forced her family to seek refuge in a camp in Bangladesh. They later settled in Chicago through the United Nations Refugee Agency in 2019. Through Fatima’s memories of Ramadan, this story shows how faith, community, and hope help Rohingya families rebuild a sense of belonging.The Rohingya were made stateless by Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Act. In August 2017, a military campaign drove more than 700,000 people into Bangladesh; the United States formally determined in March 2022 that this violence constituted genocide and crimes against humanity. Seven years after resettling in Chicago, Fatima’s family still has no country and no clear path to citizenship — but at an iftar table on the city’s North Side, they found a community that speaks their language.Produced by Bing Wang @bingwangnews for Reparations Media NFP | In collaboration with Rohingya Cultural Center of Chicago @rohingya_center_of_chicago Support the show