Cynthia has over five years of experience advocating on behalf of immigrants, informal workers, and incarcerated individuals. She is interested in the processes of developing and implementing policies that expand the social rights of marginalized communities, as well as the influence of movement building in policymaking.Â
Before coming to Oxford, Cynthia directed a program that monitored human rights abuses and conditions across immigration prisons in the United States. The reports gathered through her program regarding dangerous and abusive prison conditions under COVID-19 led to the first call for mass release by federal elected officials. Cynthia has worked in city and state-level campaigns to prevent the expansion of private prisons for the purpose of detaining immigrants and supported shutdown campaigns of existing prisons (private and public). Â
Additionally, for three years, Cynthia served on the board of directors of IDEPSCA, a community-based group that follows the principles of popular education to organize and educate day laborers and domestic workers. In Los Angeles. Â
Currently, Cynthia is reading for an MSc in Comparative Social Policy where she hopes to explore how social policies can shape more just societies. She is a UCLA alumna and was awarded Departmental Highest Honors for her undergraduate thesis, which explored how undocumented immigrants exert their power to influence policy.Â
