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Author Bio

Juan Carlos Ruiz Malagon (He/Him/They/Them) is a first-generation, low-income, fourth-year doctoral candidate in public health at the Joe C. Wen School of Public Health, University of California, Irvine. He holds degrees from UC Davis (B.A. in Chicano/a Studies), UCSD (M.A. in Global Health), and Stanford University (M.S. in Community Health and Prevention Research). His research focuses on structural determinants of health, health injustices, and marginalized Latiné communities. He is committed to advancing health justice and centering community participatory methodologies in his research. His doctoral dissertation, Trabajadores Esenciales, Derechos Desechables (Essential Workers, Disposable Rights): An Analysis of California’s Legislative Environment Shaping Farmworker Health Equity, builds on scholarship to address farmworker inequities within policy. 

Belinda Hernandez Arriaga (She/Her) is a faculty coordinator for the Master’s in Counseling MFT program at University of San Francisco’s South Bay location. Belinda has a doctorate in education and is a licensed clinical social worker with eighteen years of experience working in community mental health, with a specialization in child trauma and Latino mental health. Her current research is focused on understanding the emotional, psychological, and traumatic experiences that impact undocumented and mixed-status Latino youth.

Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola (He/Him/él) serves as the Director of the PACE Scholarship Program at Salt Lake Community College, where he leads efforts to expand college access and support the success of first-generation and low-income students. He holds an honors bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy from the University of Utah. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in higher education leadership at Florida Atlantic University, where his research focuses on the institutional enactment of the civic mission of higher education, particularly within community colleges, and is broadly concerned with how public institutions advance the public good. 

Abstract

This essay calls for a transformative shift in public health and social work education to confront the racialized violence embedded in U.S. immigration enforcement, especially intensified during the second Trump administration (2025 -2029). Policies and enforcement events like the reinstated Remain in Mexico program and the widespread ICE raids in Los Angeles are part of a troubling rise of "crimmigration," which blends immigration and criminal law. This merging has normalized cruelty, heightened legal insecurity, and fostered fear within immigrant communities, leading to a sharp increase in mass detentions and deportations. Despite the sociopolitical reality, many public health and social work education programs remain silent or address these human rights issues only superficially. We assert that excluding crimmigration and legal violence from curricula perpetuates a legacy of epistemic and structural harm enacted on undocumented immigrant communities. Guided by scholars such as Leisy Abrego, Sarah Lakhani, and Cecilia Menjívar, we endorse crimmigration pedagogy, highlighting structural analysis, accountability, and solidarity with immigrant communities. Through classroom and field-based examples, we show how educators can challenge sanitized narratives, center immigrant dignity, and equip practitioners to confront institutional complicity, emphasizing that human rights education is not merely optional but vital for fostering transformative practices in public health and social work training.

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