My research and teaching focus on immigration, borders, and race. Trained in history and law, I pay close attention to migration and immigration law in constructing notions of belonging and state power. I am also interested in transnational methodologies and relational approaches to the study of race, exploring the historical connections between Asian, Latinx, African American, and Indigenous peoples within the U.S. and across national boundaries. My research has been supported by multiple grants and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship, and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s New Directions Fellowship.

My first book, Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), examined the history of diverse immigrants in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and the development of immigration policy and law on both sides of the border. The book received the David J. Weber-Clements Center Prize from the Western History Association; the Outstanding Achievement in History award from the Association for Asian American Studies; the Humanities Book Award from the Institute for Humanities Research; and an Honorable Mention for the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award for the best book on U.S. immigration history.

I am currently finalizing my second book, Powers to Exclude: Immigration and American Empire (University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming fall 2027), which examines contestations over U.S. territorial control and border expansions from the 1870s to 1930. This book reframes the origins of federal immigration law - and the nation’s right to exclude - as rooted in broader struggles over the changing terrain of U.S. empire. Following the expansion of U.S. borders from the continental U.S. into the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, I trace how U.S. powers to regulate and exclude certain populations from its territory and body politic emerged in and reverberated through federal immigration law, federal Indian law, and insular laws.

My next book project combines my expertise in immigration law and borders with my growing interest in environmental history. A “Natural” Disaster offers a more recent environmental history of U.S. immigration law at the U.S.-Mexico border, exploring how migration control and border security policies since the 1990s have altered the physical landscape and the diverse human and non-human ecosystems of the border.

I welcome Ph.D. applications from prospective students interested in migration, race, law, borders, the U.S. West and borderlands, and the Pacific World.

Select Articles

“Plenary Powers: Chinese Immigration, Sovereignty Challenges, and the Making of Federal Immigration Power in the U.S. West,” Journal of American History 112:3 (December 2025): 482-512.  Winner: OAH Binkley-Stephenson Award.

“Making a Border (or What Does Arizona History Tell Us About the U.S.-Mexico Border?),”  Journal of Arizona History 64:3 (Autumn 2023): 451-65.

“Mormons and Mohammedans: Race, Religion, and the Anti-Polygamy Bar in U.S. Immigration Law,” Journal of American Ethnic History 41:1 (2021): 5-49.  Winner: WHA Ray Allen Billington Prize; IEHS Carlton C. Qualey Memorial Article Award.

“Immigration, Plenary Powers, and Sovereignty Talk: Then and Now,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19:2 (2020): 217-29.

“Laws for a Nation of Nativists and Immigrants,” co-authored with Maddalena Marinari, Modern American History 2 (2019), 1-4, accessible at https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2018.36.

“Reconceptualizing Asian Pacific American Identity at the Margins,” UC Irvine Law Review 3:4 (2014): 1151-77.

“Immigration, Asylum, and Citizenship: A More Holistic Approach,” California Law Review 101:4 (2013): 1013-77.

“Chinos and Paisanos: Chinese-Mexican Relations in the Borderlands,” Pacific Historical Review 79:1 (2010): 50-85.