The foreign-born population in the United States is estimated to be more than 45 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. UCLA has experts who can comment on immigration law, birthright citizenship, 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 the Susan Westerberg Prager professor of law and an expert on immigration and citizenship law. As the co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, he has written extensively on the subject, and he has served as co-counsel on cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has testified before Congress.
Ahilan Arulanantham
Arulanantham is a professor from practice and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. His expertise includes asylum and the border, immigration detention and immigration policymaking on the state and local levels.
Cecilia Menjivar
Cecilia Menjivar holds the Dorothy L. Meier Chair in Social Equities and is a professor of sociology. Her research centers on the effects of immigration law, policies and enforcement practices on immigrants’ lives and families, as well as gender-based violence in Central America.
Jason De León
A professor of anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American studies, De León is an expert on the study of migration and the human consequences of immigration policy, with a focus on undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He is the author of the 2024 National Book Award-winning “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling.”
Kelly Lytle Hernández
A professor of history, Lytle Hernández is an expert on the history and politics of immigration and emigration, particularly between the United States and Mexico. The author of “MIGRA!: A History of U.S. Border Patrol,” her research has focused on race, police and prison systems throughout the American West and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
Chris Zepeda-Millán
Zepeda-Millán is an associate professor of Chicana/o and Central American studies and of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is the chair of the Labor Studies program and an expert on immigration policy and public opinion, labor politics and social movements.
Ingrid Eagly
Eagly, a professor of law and faculty co-director of the Criminal Justice Program, 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.
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. He can speak on a variety of related issues, including trade, investment and migration relations between the United States, Mexico, Latin America and the Pacific Rim, as well as international political economy.
Amada Armenta
Armenta is the faculty director of the Latino Policy and Politics Institute, an associate professor of urban planning and author of “Protect, Serve and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement.” Her research examines the connections between the immigration enforcement system and the criminal justice system, as well as their implications.
Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas
Dominguez-Villegas is the director of research for the Latino Policy and Politics Institute and founding director of the Latino Data Hub. He is an expert on migration policy, immigrant rights and deportation, as well as demographic and population studies. He has testified as an immigration expert in national and international court cases.
Leisy Abrego
A professor of Chicana/o and Central American studies, Abrego is a law and society scholar who studies the intimate consequences of U.S. foreign and immigration policies for Central American migrants and Latinx families, including refugees and undocumented students, and the production of “illegality” through immigration laws.
Talia Inlender
Inlender is the deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy and a longtime legal advocate for non-citizens and immigrants. An expert on immigration proceedings and litigation, she previously worked for the UCLA Immigration Law Clinic, the Immigrants’ Rights Project and Public Counsel, where she launched their detained deportation defense program.
Saba Waheed
Waheed is the director of the UCLA Labor Center, as well as the center’s former research director. She is an expert on labor issues, research justice, economic equity, worker rights and low-wage service industries such as taxis, restaurants, nail salons and domestic work, as well as sharing economy businesses like Uber and Lyft.
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.
Rubén Hernández-León
Hernández-León is a professor of sociology and director of the UCLA Latin American Institute. His work focuses on U.S. and Mexican policy, the history of migration of Mexicans to the U.S., mobility among Mexican immigrants and the role of the migration industry in the international migratory system.
Margaret Peters
Peters is a professor of political science and an expert on U.S. immigration policy, global migration patterns and their causes. Her book, “Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization,” studies the relationship between trade policy, outsourcing and immigration policy.
Janna Shadduck-Hernández
Shadduck-Hernández is a project director at the UCLA Labor Center and an expert on labor education, worker advocacy and immigration, specifically the organizing efforts of low-wage immigrant workers to combat labor and workplace violations. Shadduck- Hernández speaks Spanish.
Abel Valenzuela
Valenzuela is the dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences and a professor of labor studies, urban planning and Chicana/o and Central American studies. He previously directed the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and he served as special advisor to the chancellor on immigration policy. He is an expert on the impact of immigration in urban neighborhoods, day laborers and the experiences of minority groups in the labor market.
Kent Wong
Wong is a project director for labor and community partnerships at the UCLA Labor Center, as well as the center’s former director. He is an expert on labor unions, labor relations and immigrant workers. A labor attorney, Wong has conducted extensive research on immigrant workers in Los Angeles.
