This reflective essay draws on the personal experiences of the author in negotiating various tensions of engaged research and raises several troubling questions about research with immigrant populations, particularly concerning engagement, ethics, and educational contexts. Three "lenses" (or, three theoretical framings) serve as springboards for this analysis--the paradoxes of activism, the promises of mutuality, and the privileges of "ethics"--with concluding reflections about the power of framing and reframing our work.