Mike is the Director, Research and Evaluation at Acacia Center for Justice where he leads research and program evaluation work for the organization. Before joining Acacia, he consulted as a Migration Dynamics Expert for USAID/Honduras and taught courses in political science, world politics, migration studies, and human rights at the University of California Washington, DC Program (UCDC), and other universities in the area. He has served more than a dozen times as an expert witness on country conditions in Mexico and Honduras in US immigration court and is a recognized expert in social science research methodology, migration dynamics, and politics and society in Latin America.

His recent chapter “Fortress North America: Theorizing a Regional Approach to Migration Management” (UNM Press 2023, with Castañeda and Rathod) explores how the North American states seek to exclude unwanted asylum seekers and immigrants from their territories, often in collaboration with each other. His book Emigrants Get Political: Mexican Migrants Engage Their Home Towns (Oxford 2018) identifies and analyzes the different ways in which Mexican migrants participate in and shape the politics of their home towns after migrating. He has also studied the politics of indigenous rights movements in Latin America and is co-editor of Latin America’s Multicultural Movements and the Struggle Between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human Rights (Oxford 2013). Mike is a political scientist by training (Ph.D. 2013, American University) and holds an M.A. in international policy studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) and Spanish and philosophy degrees from Santa Clara University. He is based in Washington, DC.