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Tag: jose antonio vargas
Detentions A ‘Risk’ Faced By Undocumented U.S. Migrants: Activist

Detentions A ‘Risk’ Faced By Undocumented U.S. Migrants: Activist

Washington (AFP) — Immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas said Wednesday his detention by U.S. border agents in Texas was just an example of the risks that undocumented immigrants face every day in America.

Vargas, 33, a Philippines-born prize-winning journalist, was handcuffed and questioned by Border Patrol officers Tuesday as he prepared to board a domestic flight to Los Angeles in the border city of McAllen.

He was ordered to appear before an immigration judge, but not before news of his detention triggered a media storm amid an influx of tens of thousands of Central American children over the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I’ve been travelling around the country for the past three years” without incident using a Philippine passport that lacks a US visa, said Vargas, who came out as an undocumented immigrant in a widely-read 2011 essay.

But he told CNN he was unaware — on his first visit to Texas to investigate the plight of child immigrants — that the border there is a “militarized zone” with checkpoints scattered as far as 45 miles (70 kilometers) from the border.

“When you fly through JFK … there’s no Border Patrol agent checking your passport when you go through,” explained Vargas, referring to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“But here, in south Texas, that’s what happened — and, you know, people need to understand that if you are undocumented in this country, that’s the risk you take.”

– ‘Look in their eyes’ –

Asked about the migrant youngsters he encountered in Texas, Vargas said: “All you have to do is look in the eyes of these children to know that they have been through some sort of hell.”

Vargas was 12 years old in 1993 when his young mother put him on a flight in Manila to be raised by his grandparents in California, in hopes that he could live the American dream.

He went on to join the Washington Post, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, then came out in a 2011 essay in the New York Times as one of America’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

What happened since that Times essay was the subject of “Documented,” a feature documentary written, produced and directed by Vargas, which got its world premiere in June last year.

U.S. authorities are currently grappling with a surge of unaccompanied and undocumented children streaming over the Mexican border that has inflamed an already heated debate over immigration policy and border security.

Over 57,000 youngsters have illegally entered the United States since October, the majority arriving in Texas, according to official U.S. data. They are mostly from Central America, fleeing poverty and violence.

AFP Photo / Justin Sullivan

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Immigration Activist Jose Antonio Vargas Detained At Texas Airport

Immigration Activist Jose Antonio Vargas Detained At Texas Airport

By Stacey Leasca, Javier Panzar, and Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

MCALLEN, Texas — Prominent journalist and immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas was detained at McAllen-Miller International Airport in Texas on Tuesday.

Vargas, an undocumented immigrant, tweeted that he was going to go through security carrying a pocket version of the U.S. Constitution and his Philippine passport as his only form of identification. After that, his tweets stopped.

A call to the airport has not been returned and a Border Patrol spokesman reached Tuesday morning said he was unaware of the situation but was seeking more information. Another Border Patrol spokesperson told the Associated Press that Vargas was indeed in custody.

Vargas said Friday in Politico Magazine that he flew to the Texas border town on Thursday, and was then warned that he may not be able to leave due to the interior border control checks in and around the area.

Ryan Eller, the campaign director for Define American, a group Vargas founded, said Vargas was on his way to Los Angeles on Monday to attend a screening of his new documentary, “Documented.”

“It became apparent during our time here, in this border town (that he might not be able to leave) — a situation shared by thousands of undocumented Americans who are ‘stuck’ at the border, which for them is a daily struggle,” Eller said in a statement.

Mario Carillo, a spokesman for United We Dream, an organization that represents young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children which Vargas also co-founded, said supporters of Vargas are standing outside the McAllen Border Patrol Station, where he is being detained.

In 2011, the former Washington Post reporter revealed in The New York Times Magazine article that he was undocumented. In 2012, he was arrested on a traffic violation in Minnesota, but released. He has since become a highly visible immigration activist.
While many of have voiced support for Vargas, Bryan Johnson, an immigration attorney in New York who represents several minors from Central America in immigration court, seemed skeptical of Vargas’ plight.

Vargas “likely knew he would be arrested by Border Patrol before he made the trip to South Texas,” he said in a message to the Los Angeles Times, saying it appears Vargas was trying to increase pressure on the Obama administration to expand deferred immigration action for everyone, but Johnson said that is unlikely to help with the crisis of the flood of unaccompanied children crossing the border. Johnson predicted Vargas would be released soon.

“He will likely be released in a couple of hours, free to go on his way.”

Photo via WikiCommons

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Celebrated Journalist Comes Out as Undocumented Immigrant

Jose Antonio Vargas dropped a bombshell on the political and media worlds this morning when he acknowledged publicly that he is an illegal immigrant.

The journalist has done work for The New Yorker and The Washington Post, amongst other publications, and this week began a campaign to redefine what it means to be American.

His story, published on his new website as well as in The New York Times Magazine is worth the read, but below are some of the key graphs:

“One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. ‘‘This is fake,’’ she whispered. ‘‘Don’t come back here again.’’

Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. ‘‘Peke ba ito?’’ I asked in Tagalog. (‘‘Is this fake?’’) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. 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.

I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.

I’ve tried. 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. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.”

We can expect this one to garner lots of thoughtful coverage, not least because most of those writing about it will consider Vargas one of their own.