Turns out the one-time Chronicle intern and former Washington Post reporter who famously announced last year that he was in the country illegally doesn’t appear to face much chance of being deported. In a piece for
Time magazine he describes tiring of wondering if ICE agents were going to pounce and finally decided to confront the agency directly. Here’s a pay-wall liberated excerpt
via Poynter:
I spend every day wondering what, if anything, the government plans to do with me. After months of waiting for something to happen, I decided that I would confront immigration officials myself. Since I live in New York City, I called the local ICE office. The phone operators I first reached were taken aback when I explained the reason for my call. Finally I was connected to an ICE officer.
The rest is after the jump:
“Are you planning on deporting me?” I asked.
I quickly found out that even though I publicly came out about my undocumented status, I still do not exist in the eyes of ICE. Like most undocumented immigrants, I’ve never been arrested. Therefore, I’ve never been in contact with ICE.
“After checking the appropriate ICE databases, the agency has no records of ever encountering Mr. Vargas,” Luis Martinez, a spokesman for the ICE office in New York, wrote me in an e-mail.
Image: Time magazine
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