She earned her B.A. in Ethnic Studies and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Studies in Education, all from the University of California at Berkeley. Raised on the U.S.-Mexico border, Negrón-Gonzales has been working with, supporting, and researching the lives of undocumented youth for the past ten years in multiple capacities: as a student affairs professional, a scholar, and as an activist. She discovered her own intellectual and activist passion at the age of sixteen, when she became involved in the immigrant rights movement by fighting against the anti-immigrant California Ballot Proposition 187. In her time at UC Berkeley, she also fought to save Affirmative Action and Ethnic Studies on campus, and was active fighting against the criminalization of young people through the campaign against California’s Proposition 21.