[6] She has described seeing the U.S. Border Patrol track and monitor Latinos in her community and noticed it as "being hauntingly similar to what many of what us African American kids and teens were experiencing in terms of the rise of the war on drugs at the same time."

In the neighborhoods where she lived, armed border officers targeted Mexicans—"snatched them off buses, chased them across highways, and took my friend's uncle in the middle of the night."

When asked why she wrote the book, Hernández referred back to her formative experiences in San Diego and said: "I just had this passion in my belly that was driving me to want to write this history of the border patrol....

Reviewers have called it "impressive and painstakingly researched", a "rich and detailed analysis", "well written and highly insightful," and praised its used of previously "untapped source materials".

She documents how "settlers persistently deployed incarceration as a means of purging, removing, caging, containing, erasing, disappearing, and otherwise eliminating indigenous communities and racially targeted populations".

To overcome this problem she had to rely on what she calls the "rebel archive", the records of the resistance and rebellion of those "who fought the rise of jails and prisons and detentions centers."

Reviewers have called the book "extraordinary—bracing, brave, and profoundly important"; "superb"; an "incisive and meticulously researched study of the transformation of Los Angeles from a small group of Native American communities in the 18th century into an 'Aryan city of the sun' in the 20th"; "phenomenal...path-breaking" and "insightful".

Others have noted the book's "radically new perspective" and praised the fact that it "demonstrates incontrovertibly that the systems of immigrant exclusion and mass incarceration emerged together and fed each other."

A reviewer from the Los Angeles Times observes that the book's "central premise" is "the idea that Mexican and U.S. histories aren’t isolated from each other but are so intertwined that you can’t separate them.

She continued, "Imperialists and white supremacists have used this kind of language to stir up anti-Mexican, anti-Latino, and anti-immigrant sentiment.... when you start to hear that racist rhetoric, dig a little deeper to ask what's it all about?

The project's website posts research reports which summarize trends in local policing and incarceration, "including the disproportionate effects of bail on predominantly African American and Latina/Latino communities."

"Million Dollar Hoods has supported efforts to shift public funding away from police and jails, toward systems that are proven to create thriving families and communities, such as housing, education and health services."