There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. UCLA has experts who can comment on immigration and citizenship law, how immigrants affect the economy and labor markets, Chicano and Latino political movements, deportation and detention and U.S.-Mexico relations. Click an expert’s name for a more detailed biography and contact information.
Hiroshi Motomura
Motomura is a professor of law and an expert on immigration and citizenship law. He has written extensively on the subject, has served as co-counsel on cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has testified before Congress.
Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda
Hinojosa-Ojeda is an associate professor of Chicana/o and Central American studies and an expert on immigration and immigrants in the United States, with a focus on labor markets.
Ingrid Eagly
Eagly, a professor of law and faculty director of the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy, is an expert on immigration law. Her research explores the intersection of immigration law and criminal justice, and her recent scholarship has focused on the right to counsel in immigration proceedings.
Laura Gomez
Laura Gómez, a professor of law and faculty director of UCLA's Critical Race Studies program, is a leading expert on race, law, politics and society. Gómez, who is also a faculty member in the departments of sociology and Chicana/o and Central American studies, is the author of “Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race” and the forthcoming “Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism,” among other books.
Abel Valenzuela
Valenzuela is a professor of Chicana/o and Central American studies and an expert on immigration issues and day laborers. His research has focused on the impact of immigration in urban neighborhoods and the experiences of minority groups in the labor market.
Victor Narro
Victor Narro, a project director with the UCLA Labor Center, is an expert on the workplace rights of immigrant workers and immigration policy. Narro’s work has included studies of street vendors, agricultural workers and the garment industry, among other topics.
Kent Wong
Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, is an expert on issues related to labor unions, labor relations and immigrant workers. A labor attorney, Wong has conducted extensive research on immigrant workers in Los Angeles and how immigration affects the labor market.
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Lytle Hernández is a professor of history and an expert on the history and politics of immigration and emigration, particularly between the United States and Mexico. Her book “MIGRA!” was the first to tell the story of how and why the U.S. Border Patrol concentrates its resources on policing unsanctioned Mexican immigration despite the many possible targets and strategies of U.S. migration control.
Betty Hung
Hung, staff director at the UCLA Labor Center and a lecturer in UCLA's labor studies program, is a longtime social justice advocate who has worked on campaigns and initiatives concerned with workers’ rights, racial justice, education equity and immigrants’ rights.
Leisy Abrego
Leisy J. Abrego is a professor of Chicana/o and Central American studies whose research focuses on Central American immigration, Latino families and the production of “illegality” through U.S. immigration laws. Her current scholarship examines the day-to-day lives of mixed-status families following the implementation of DACA.
Chris Zepeda-Millán
Zepeda-Millán, a professor of public policy and associate director of faculty research at UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, is an expert on Latino politics, immigration policy and public opinion.
To find more faculty members with expertise, search the Media Guide to UCLA Experts.
