I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois Chicago and Co-Director of the Applied Policy Research Lab at UIC’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. My research examines how policing both responds to and reproduces social inequality in the United States. Using quantitative research designs oriented toward causal explanation, I analyze how shifts in policy and broader social conditions shape enforcement patterns and disparities in criminal justice contact. 

My work advances two interrelated lines of inquiry:

1. Policing and immigration enforcement. This research focuses on the growing entanglement between local policing and immigration enforcement, showing how immigration policy and rhetoric reshape policing practices and contribute to unequal patterns of criminal justice contact, while also identifying conditions under which these effects may be mitigated.

2. Structural influences on policing in marginalized communities. This line of inquiry examines how broader societal forces—such as crises of police legitimacy, public service retrenchment, and policing strategies—reconfigure police activity, often expanding enforcement in marginalized communities and deepening inequality.

My work has been published in leading journals across criminology, urban studies, and migration research, including Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Criminology & Public Policy, the Journal of Urban Economics, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.