I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego.
As a sociologist, I study the way law and legal institutions reproduce inequality and how they can mitigate it, in the cases of (undocumented) immigrants, police, and queer youth. My current research examines the way that police, courts, and wraparound community service providers channel queer youth of color into and out of the juvenile justice system.
In 2020, I published my second book Myth and Reality in the U.S. Immigration Debate (Routledge): a short, readable primer on the impact of immigration on U.S. society and how to think about immigration reform.
In 2018, I published my first book, Immigrants Under Threat: Risk and Resistance in the Deportation Nation (NYU Press), an ethnographic study of two Mexican immigrant communities and their protest against the everyday consequences of undocumented status. It was the co-winner of the 2019 Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award given by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
My research appears in the journals the American Sociological Review (with Victor Rios and Jonathan Ibarra), Research in Social Movements Conflict and Change, Latino Studies, and The American Sociologist.
I teach classes on quantitative methods, race and racism, gender, sexualities, and law & society.
I received my PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara where I worked under the supervision of Howard Winant. I live in the Banker’s Hill neighborhood of San Diego with my partner. My activism focuses on immigrant rights, police accountability, and LGBTQ youth.