Professor Saito's scholarship has addressed the function of the "foreignness" in the construction of Asian American racial identity; redress for Japanese Americans interned by the U.S. during WWII; the relationship of the Japanese American internment to the contemporary treatment of Arab Americans; the Supreme Court's "plenary power" doctrine as applied to immigrants, American Indian nations and colonies such as Puerto Rico; and the 2001 USA Patriot Act and other post-9/11 developments. She is currently the co-director of the Human Rights Research Fund and on the board of directors of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.