Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas was released by Border Patrol late Tuesday night after being detained when trying to pass through security at an airport in McAllen, Texas (via New York Times). 

Vargas visited McAllen to document the struggle of hundreds of undocumented children being held in detention facilities. Since revealing his status as an undocumented immigrant in an op-ed in the New York Times, Vargas has become the most high-profile leader of the immigration rights movement.  

READ MORE: Honduran Women And Children Deported From U.S.

Department of Homeland Security officials stated that they released Mr. Vargas because he had no prior immigration or criminal record. 

Vargas did not know that he lacked legal immigration status until he was 16, when he took what he thought were a valid visa and green card to the DMV and was told that they were “bogus.” 

Since his “coming out” as an undocumented immigrant, Vargas has founded Define American, a campaign to humanize the stories of millions of others like him - law-abiding residents of the United States who dream of a path to citizenship, and whose very existence is in limbo.

READ MORE: Majority Of Border Kids Will Be Deported

Vargas also wrote and directed Documented, a film that tells his personal experience living in the U.S. as well as chronicles contemporary efforts at immigration reform. 

Shortly after Vargas’s article on the issue of undocumented immigrants was published in TIME magazine, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that it would no longer deport young undocumented residents who qualify for the DREAM Act. 

Vargas has visited over 40 states to attend events in support of undocumented immigrants and immigration policy reform.  

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