David Hernandez

Assistant Professor
Department: Cesar E. Chavez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies
7373 Bunche
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Tel: (310) 794-7037
dhernandez@chavez.ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Mexico

Professor David Hernández researches international migration and Latina/o politics. He teaches courses on the politics of inequality, Latina/o immigration, and deportation and repatriation movements in the United States. For two summers, he also taught courses in the Transfer Scholars Program in the Academic Advancement Program. 

Hernández’s recent publication, “'My Fellow Citizens': Barack Obama and Immigration Policy” (Journal of Race and Policy 6:1, 2010) examines the Obama administration's missteps in executing comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. The article considers Obama's life narrative and campaign rhetoric, as well as other presidential efforts on immigration, to demonstrate how comprehensive immigration reform is usually articulated as a screen to protect politicians from policy decisions that are politically risky. Currently, Hernández is working on a new book, Undue Process: Immigrant Detention and Lesser Citizenship. Undue Process examines the institution of immigrant detention in the United States, addressing its racial genealogy, its intersections with the U.S. prison system, the mechanisms used to criminalize immigrants, and the historic consolidation of this federal authority over all noncitizens.