John is an assistant professor of Latinx Studies and Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He completed his PhD and MA at Cornell University with graduate concentrations in Latina/o Studies and Latin American Studies. His research focuses on migration from Central America and Mexico.

He is the translator of Letters from Inside a U.S. Detention Center: Carla's Story (Routledge, 2023) and the director of an award-winning documentary about the militarization of the Mexico–Guatemala border. His writing can be found or is forthcoming in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Diacritics, Latin American Cultural Studies, Latin American Literary Review, Modern Fiction Studies, and other venues. His previous social impact work was featured in Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Los Angeles Times, and other venues.

He is currently working on two book projects—the first explores unaccompanied childhood migration narratives in Latinx and Indigenous literature alongside film, media, and legal and human rights documents and policies. It examines the afterlives of the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) and the relationship between the terms unaccompanied child (UC) and unaccompanied alien child (UAC). John is also working on a creative manuscript.

John is from the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. He grew up visiting family in Guatemala (Ixim Ulew) and El Salvador and has lived or resided on Lenape, Aniyvwiya (Cherokee), Gayogohó:nǫˀ (Cayuga), Garínagu, Quechua, Lenca, Hinóno'éí (Arapaho), Tsistsistas (Cheyenne), Núuchiu (Ute), Nahuat, and Maya lands. He is a second generation Guatemalan American with family from the US, Canada, Guatemala, and El Salvador.