Professor Rodríguez's research focuses on race, migration, and the intersection of criminal and immigration law. His scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Cornell Law Review, Temple Law Review, and Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. He is also co-editor of a book on the sanctuary movement, The Road to Sanctuary: Building Power and Community in Philadelphia (2022).

Before coming to Wake Forest, Professor Rodríguez was on the faculty at St. John's School of Law. He has also served as director of Villanova Law School's asylum clinic and inaugural director of the Center on Immigration at Cabrini University. Prior to entering academia, Professor Rodríguez was the immigration specialist at the Defender Association and a staff attorney at Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia, where he specialized in deportation defense for the formerly convicted. He began his legal career as a Langer, Grogan, and Diver Social Justice Fellow at Esperanza Immigration Legal Services in North Philadelphia.

Professor Rodríguez earned his JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was a Toll Public Interest Scholar. He also holds a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from Stanford University and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University. The son of immigrants, he is a first-generation high school, college, and law school graduate.