Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez is an assistant professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on the effects of U.S. government policies on immigrant communities, particularly on the mistreatment and exclusion of Mexican and Central American children and youth. This includes educational deprivation, labor trafficking, mandatory detention, family separation, deportation, and deadly abuse by U.S. authorities and employers.

Her research explores how law and “alienage” nullifies migrant minors’ access to the rights of childhood and how discourse on migrant youth on child innocence has been used to weaponize and criminalize parents and youth.