Her research primarily focuses on families, with specific expertise in research with Mexican migrants and with children. Her work includes a variety of qualitative methods, emphasizing ethnography, comparative research and in-depth interviews techniques. Her most recent book, Everyday Illegal: When policies undermine immigrant families (University of California 2015) explores the impacts of immigration enforcement policies on families. The book as well as her award-winning article “The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families” (Journal of Marriage and Family 2012), draws from a comparative study of Mexican families living in two new destination communities in central New Jersey and northeast Ohio.