Outspoken Immigrant Advocate, Also Undocumented, Is Held in Texas
Jose Antonio Vargas, Immigrant Activist, Is Detained at McAllen AirportBy JULIA PRESTONJULY 15, 2014

McALLEN, Tex. — Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented Filipino immigrant who is arguably the most high-profile leader of the immigrants’ rights movement, was detained Tuesday morning at a Border Patrol checkpoint in the airport here before he could board a flight to Houston.
He was handcuffed and taken for processing to the McAllen Border Patrol station, which has been teeming in recent weeks with undocumented immigrants from Central America, part of a wave of migrants who have been streaming over the border.

Mr. Vargas, a Pulitzer-winning journalist, came last week to McAllen, a city just a few miles north of the border with Mexico, for a news conference and vigil organized by United We Dream, an undocumented youth organization, outside a shelter downtown for recently released Central American migrants. Mr. Vargas wrote recently that he did not realize until he was here that he would have to cross through a Customs and Border Protection checkpoint to leave the Rio Grande Valley. Mr. Vargas travels on a valid Philippine passport, but it has no current United States visa in it.
— Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting) July 14, 2014 His apprehension poses a dilemma for the Obama administration, which will now have to decide how to handle his case at a time when the border situation has made all decisions about immigration high profile and politically fraught.
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Jose Antonio Vargas in June. Credit Kevork Djansezian/Reuters Mr. Vargas insisted he never intended to be detained when he came to South Texas, but his supporters were working hard — on Twitter and at a news conference in front of the Border Patrol station where he was held — to use the publicity to advance their demands for fewer deportations of illegal immigrants living in the country and more protections for the children crossing recently.
A blurry photograph sent by a spokesman showed Mr. Vargas in McAllen airport as a Border Patrol agent handcuffed him.
Continue reading the main story
Here's a photo of @joseiswriting in handcuffs, because the Border Patrol has nothing more pressing to do apparently pic.twitter.com/dN8KewqeZr

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 14, 2014 In an interview Sunday, Mr. Vargas said he had flown to many events around the country in recent months where he showed a documentary film he produced, “Documented,” about his life as an undocumented immigrant. He had not been stopped at airport checkpoints because Transportation Security Administration officials checked his passport but not his immigration status.
Continue reading the main story 606

“I didn’t even think twice about it,” when he accepted the invitation to join the news conference, Mr. Vargas said. When he realized that he was effectively trapped, he said, “No, this can’t be for real.” He wrote about his situation in McAllen for Politico Magazine last week.
Because of McAllen’s proximity to the border, all airports and roadways in this region have Border Patrol checkpoints.
Mr. Vargas has lived in the United States without papers since he was 12. He was formerly a reporter for The Washington Post, where he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage in 2008. He announced his undocumented status in an article in The New York Times Magazine in 2011.
Correction: July 15, 2014

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified where Jose Antonio Vargas wrote of his realization that he would have to pass through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint to leave the Rio Grande Valley. It was in his article for Politico Magazine, not on Twitter.

Mr. Vargas has lived in the United States without papers since he was 12. He was formerly a reporter for The Washington Post, where he was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage in 2008. He announced his undocumented status in an article in The New York Times Magazine in 2011.

The activist, who hails from the Philippines, was sent to live in California in 1993 at age 12 and struggled to gain US citizenship.

"I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it," he wrote in the New York Times Magazine.

"I've tried. Over the past 14 years, I've graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist," he added. "I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream.

"But I am still an undocumented immigrant."

(CNN) -- Jose Antonio Vargas, one of America's most well known undocumented immigrants, openly discussed his status for years but was never apprehended by authorities.
Until now.
On Tuesday, U.S. Border Patrol agents detained the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist-turned-activist in McAllen, Texas, after he told them he was in the country illegally, officials said.
He was released on his own recognizance with a notice to appear before an immigration judge, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
'Jose Antonio Vargas has been released' What does it mean to be American? 'Documented' reporter detained at airport
Vargas was detained Tuesday morning at the McAllen airport while trying to pass through security en route to Los Angeles, said Ryan Eller, campaign director for Define American, a group Vargas founded in 2011.
Vargas said in a statement released by a spokesperson Tuesday evening that he had been released.
"I want to thank everyone who stands by me and the undocumented immigrants of south Texas and across the country," he said. "Our daily lives are filled with fear in simple acts such as getting on an airplane to go home to our family."
Eller explained earlier that Vargas, Define American and other groups traveled to McAllen to "stand in solidarity with and humanize the stories of the children and families fleeing the most dangerous regions of Central America."
Tania Chavez, an undocumented youth leader who met with Vargas recently and has accompanied him around the McAllen area, told CNN that he was detained because he did not have proper documentation.
Vargas wrote and directed "Documented," a film about the U.S. immigration debate and his life story. CNN aired it on June 29.
He told CNN on Sunday that he traveled to McAllen to document the plight of refugees.
"Because I don't have any ID besides my Filipino passport, it's going to be hard for me to actually get out of here at some point when I decide to get out of here in the next couple of days," he said.
Early Tuesday, Vargas tweeted that he was about to go through security at McAllen-Miller International Airport. Since outing himself as an undocumented immigrant three years ago, he says he has traveled extensively, visiting 40 states.
"I don't know what's going to happen," he tweeted, directing his followers to the Twitter handles for Define American and the University of Texas-Pan American's Minority Affairs Council.
Within minutes, the latter retweeted a photo of Vargas in handcuffs with the caption: "Here's a photo of (Vargas) in handcuffs, because the Border Patrol has nothing more pressing to do apparently."
In Politico last week, Vargas wrote a piece headlined "Trapped on the Border." The story documents how he went to McAllen to visit a shelter where undocumented immigrant children were being held. He also wanted to share his "story of coming to the United States as an unaccompanied minor from the Philippines," he wrote for Politico.
Once in McAllen, he spoke to Chavez, who expressed concern that he might not make it through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoints about 45 minutes outside McAllen.
"Even if you tell them you're a U.S. citizen, they will ask you follow-up questions if they don't believe you," Chavez told him, according to the Politico piece.
"In the last 24 hours I realize that, for an undocumented immigrant like me, getting out of a border town in Texas -- by plane or by land -- won't be easy. It might, in fact, be impossible," he wrote Friday.
Before he went to bed Monday, Vargas told Eller, "Our America is better than this. We're more humane. We're more compassionate. And we're fighting for a better America, a country we love but has yet to recognize us," the Define American campaign director recalled Tuesday.
Prize-winning reporter: I'm undocumented How do we define being 'American'? Activist: Border a 'militarized zone'
At age 12, Vargas came to the United States from the Philippines in 1993 with a man he'd never met but whom his aunt and a family friend introduced as his uncle, Vargas wrote in a 2011 column for The New York Times Magazine.
Once in the States, he lived with his grandfather, a security guard, and grandmother, a food server. Both were naturalized American citizens who had been supporting Vargas and his mother since Vargas was 3. He'd later learn that his grandfather had paid $4,500 for this purported uncle -- who was a coyote, or people smuggler -- to bring Vargas to the United States under a fake passport and name.
"After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang," Vargas wrote for the magazine.
One of his earliest memories, he wrote, was a schoolmate asking him, "What's up?" He replied, "The sky."
Vargas says he didn't know he was in the country illegally until he was 16, when he applied for a driver's license and was told his green card was bogus. He went home and asked his grandfather if that was true, according to the magazine story.
"Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. 'Don't show it to other people,' he warned," Vargas wrote.
Vargas has written for numerous publications as a journalist, including The New Yorker. He interned for The Seattle Times and worked for The Huffington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Philadelphia Daily News.
In 2008, he was part of the Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its breaking news coverage of the previous year's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. Vargas got bylines on two of the nine stories the Pulitzer board cited.
"Over the past 14 years, I've graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country," he wrote in his 2011 magazine piece. "On the surface, I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant."

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


Of course we are to those who actually apply legally like the rest of the immigrants, my grandmother entered this country and got herself legalized as a citizen so what makes him think him and others deserve to have the special treatment?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
We are humane. We have due process before deportation.

Relapse wrote:
I have to confess I have very mixed feelings about illegals. On the one hand, I have deep sympathies for those trying to get their families out of whatever hell hole they might be in. I would be rolling those kind of dice myself if I were in a similar situation as I suspect most here on these boards would also do.
On the other hand I have seen first hand scammers arrogantly use various tricks to game the system and cheat their way into this country.
What's the solution? Dumping scared people who can barely, if at all speak, english at bus stops is asnine and does no one any real service.
I can't see a solution, so I vary between outrage at what is going on right now to wanting to take in and sponser some of these people trying to find a better life for their families.
It's a hell of a pickle for the immigrants who have taken so many risks to get here.

The obvious solution is a giant wall

Relapse wrote:
What's the solution? Dumping scared people who can barely, if at all speak, english at bus stops is asnine and does no one any real service.

 Jihadin wrote:
You know its bad when Jesse Jackson got on Fox News and talked about it. What's irking me is the idea that "Obama planned this" facet some are claiming. Actually kind of pissing me. The under handed way of moving the Unaccompanied Minors and Illegal Immigrants to areas deeper in the US is freaking stupid. We have "FoB in a Can" that can be set up which can handle 800 people in a location.

 Jihadin wrote:
You know its bad when Jesse Jackson got on Fox News and talked about it. What's irking me is the idea that "Obama planned this" facet some are claiming.

Relapse wrote:
This is the thing that bugs me about this current situation, also. Just dumping people or sending them off to be who knows where is ultimate stupidity. Help the people, dammit, don't dick around ith half assed measures putting them and us at risk.1

 Ouze wrote:
[... man, I don't know when swathes of this country turned into a bunch of superstitious idiots willing to believe any conspiracy theory that makes [i]their team look good

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Relapse wrote:
I have to confess I have very mixed feelings about illegals. On the one hand, I have deep sympathies for those trying to get their families out of whatever hell hole they might be in. I would be rolling those kind of dice myself if I were in a similar situation as I suspect most here on these boards would also do.
On the other hand I have seen first hand scammers arrogantly use various tricks to game the system and cheat their way into this country.
What's the solution? Dumping scared people who can barely, if at all speak, english at bus stops is asnine and does no one any real service.
I can't see a solution, so I vary between outrage at what is going on right now to wanting to take in and sponser some of these people trying to find a better life for their families.
It's a hell of a pickle for the immigrants who have taken so many risks to get here.

The obvious solution is a giant wall

 Ouze wrote:

Relapse wrote:
This is the thing that bugs me about this current situation, also. Just dumping people or sending them off to be who knows where is ultimate stupidity. Help the people, dammit, don't dick around ith half assed measures putting them and us at risk.1

I think that deserves an exalt. Maybe these children are eligible for political asylum, maybe they aren't but should be, and maybe they aren't and need to go back, but ultimately these are minor children in the United States that need to be cared for while they are here (and our population protected from any associated public health risks, as well). I'd like to think that's something both sides of our aisle can agree upon.

 reds8n wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
[... man, I don't know when swathes of this country turned into a bunch of superstitious idiots willing to believe any conspiracy theory that makes [i]their team look good

http://www.cracked.com/article_21341_5-ways-every-conspiracy-theory-makes-world-worse.html/

The linked/related Sandy Hook thing is just ....

 Ouze wrote:

 reds8n wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
[... man, I don't know when swathes of this country turned into a bunch of superstitious idiots willing to believe any conspiracy theory that makes [i]their team look good

http://www.cracked.com/article_21341_5-ways-every-conspiracy-theory-makes-world-worse.html/

The linked/related Sandy Hook thing is just ....

I don't think it's possible to read that article without feeling a little angry afterward.