Her book Space of Detention: The Making of a Transnational Gang Crisis between Los Angeles and San Salvador (Duke University Press 2011) is a multi-sited ethnographic account and spatial analysis of how transnational gangs became an issue of central concern for national and regional security between the U.S. and Central America. Her new project on river revitalization in the Southwestern United States and U.S. – Mexico border regions extends her interest in the urban built environment and the geography and spatial expression of race, into the domains of urban nature, infrastructure, and environmental justice.