William Lopez is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He researches the effects of immigration law enforcement on communities subject to deportation and immigration raids. Lopez is also the director of public scholarship at the university’s National Center for Institutional Diversity, where he supports research and is the managing editor of Spark, the center’s online magazine. 

Lopez is the author of Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid (2021), which details the strain that immigration raids place on Latino communities and how these communities recover from them. 

He does research and advocacy work with the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Synod Community Services, which informed his book. He has published research on the avoidance of health care due to fear of deportation; deportation of fathers and the poverty that can follow for their families; impacts of large-scale raids and subsequent arrests; and links between the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration advocacy. 

He has a B.A. in psychology from the University of Notre Dame; an MPH in management, policy and community health from the University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston; and a Ph.D. in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan.

Courtesy of William Lopez

Pronouns: He/him/él

Expertise: Immigration, ICE, Latino health, deportation, police violence, community health 

Location: Ann Arbor, Mich. 

Email: wdlopez@umich.edu 

Phone: (734) 647-1421

Twitter: @lopez_wd

Heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday: “The Aftermath Of An Immigration Raid In ‘Separated'”