Thanks to the American Dream Fund, I met many other undocumented students at Arizona State University. We were tired of living in the shadows and founded a student organization that later became the Arizona Dream Act Coalition. I then joined the larger movement for the federal DREAM Act and immigration reform in 2010. I was also involved in starting the peaceful resistance against SB1070 and mobilizing voters to unseat its architect.
In 2011, two years after graduating from ASU with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and business administration, I became the first publicly undocumented student to be admitted to a PhD program in Arizona. My campaign to raise funds drew national media to humanize the plight for immigrant rights. I also co-created the DreamZone program to support undocumented students. As a graduate student leader, I advocated for the Arizona Board of Regents to establish an in-state tuition policy for DACA recipients. The policy was approved unanimously and went into effect in 2015.
In 2016, I matched at the University of California Berkeley for my doctoral internship and stayed a second year for a postdoctoral fellowship. My clinical training involved developing new approaches to supporting the mental health of immigrant students.
Since 2018, I have been a tenure-track faculty member, first at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and now at Rutgers University. I was promoted to Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology in 2023, and I am also the Associate Director of the Rutgers Center for Youth Social Emotional Wellness. My academic career has been dedicated to the psychology of immigration. To this date, I have published over 65 pieces that have received nearly 1,000 citations.
My work continues to inform public policy. In 2021, I briefed Congress on my research regarding health disparities among immigrants. In 2023, I joined a federal court case to protect the humanitarian immigration parole program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV). In March 2024, the federal judge ruled in favor of the program, making it possible for tens of thousands of families to continue to reunite, and for U.S. citizens to continue to sponsor immigrants from these crises-afflicted countries. I was also among a small group of leaders invited to the White House to discuss the Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S., and I was a speaker at the 17th Annual Psychology Day at the United Nations in 2024. None of this would be possible without the American Dream Fund.
