Associated Press | The New York Times
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn't detain Jose Antonio Vargas after his traffic arrest Friday because he's not a priority: “ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes the removal of public safety threats, recent border crossers and egregious immigration law violators, such as those who have been previously removed from the United States,” agency spokesperson Gillian Christensen told reporters.

In The New York Times, Julia Preston reports Vargas returned to New York and will go back to Minnesota for arraignment later this month to face charges of driving without a license. “I am grateful to have made it home Friday night,” he told Preston. Vargas missed the lecture he was planning to give at Carleton College; he was pulled over for driving wearing headphones but arrested after a Minnesota State Patrol officer found his Washington state driver's license had been canceled. (more...)

MinnPost
Journalist turned immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas was arrested Friday in Minnesota for driving without a valid license. The offense typically leads to a citation, rather than an arrest, reports Beth Hawkins for MinnPost, so it's unclear why Vargas was arrested. He was released soon after and tweeted:

Thank you to everyone for your support. I am fine.

— Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting) October 6, 2012

Vargas is scheduled to appear in court in two weeks, on Oct. 18, Hawkins reports. (more...)

Define American | The Seattle Times
Jose Antonio Vargas, who revealed last month in The New York Times that he is an undocumented immigrant to the U.S., has had his driver's license revoked by Washington state. Vargas got his first driver's license in Oregon. "The license meant everything to me — it would let me drive, fly and work," he wrote in The New York Times. He received the Washington driver's license only recently, when his Oregon one expired after eight years.

Early this year, just two weeks before my 30th birthday, I won a small reprieve: I obtained a driver’s license in the state of Washington. The license is valid until 2016. This offered me five more years of acceptable identification — but also five more years of fear, of lying to people I respect and institutions that trusted me, of running away from who I am.

Vargas learned Wednesday night that the license was revoked.

...it's a sad feeling. In some ways, my driver's license has been my life line. ... I am sorry that I broke our laws in order to get a driver's license. As parents tell their children, "a license is a privilege." Losing that privilege is part of my facing up to what I've done. However, I believe it is a small price to pay relative to the big things we're going to do, together.

The Seattle Times reports:

Licensing officials launched an investigation after Vargas' article appeared in the magazine June 22. They sent a letter to the Northgate-area address he had used when he applied, giving him 20 days to prove his state residency. The letter was returned unopened.

Previously: Peter Perl: ‘I haven’t been fired or suspended or fined’ for keeping Vargas secret || High school journalists kept Vargas’ secret for six weeks

Poynter.org
The Washington Post will reassign some of assistant managing editor Peter Perl’s duties, but won’t demote or suspend him for failing to disclose that former Post reporter Jose Vargas was an undocumented immigrant. Perl tells Kelly McBride:

I haven't been fired or suspended or fined or anything like that. I’ve had communication about the fact that the Post thinks that what I did was wrong and that some of my duties should be changed. People [in the newsroom] were concerned, ‘Am I going to continue in my present job?’ And the answer is yes.

“I had confidence that I work for the kind of employer that would at least look at what I did in the fullest context possible. If I had worked for other employers, I hope I would have done the same thing no matter who I worked for. But part of my thinking was my history with this institution. … I’ve invested 30 years in this institution and I believe in it and I took the risk that this particular risk was ultimately not gonna betray me.”

He says dozens of people from both inside and outside the Washington Post contacted him after Vargas' story was published.

The volume of responses that I’ve gotten, and the depth of responses that I’ve gotten, it’s been quite moving to me. It’s turned a very stressful thing into a very gratifying thing. I had a guy come in and say, ‘I just want to shake your hand, I’m proud to work for you.’ Ah, yikes. That’s pretty gratifying and if somebody thinks, ‘What a dumb thing he did,’ no one’s come to tell me that. So from my perspective, the election returns are very positive.

NPR In an interview on NPR's "All Things Considered," Jose Antonio Vargas discussed coming out as an undocumented immigrant, which he reveals in an essay for The New York Times Magazine. When NPR's Michele Norris asked him if he still considers himself a journalist after forming a group to advocate for immigration reform, he said, "I am a journalist. I go to church every day; it's journalism. It's my church. It's my religion." In response to a question about whether he'll benefit more from coming out than the immigrants he's advocating for, he said, "As I move forward with this, I will certainly make sure that this does not just become the Jose Antonio Vargas show." He also defends his journalism, saying no one has raised any questions about the 650 stories he's written in his career. Selections from the interview below. (more...)

Mountain View Patch
Jose Antonio Vargas met with the Mountain View High School newspaper staff on May 11, and told the 35 teen journalists, "I'm an undocumented immigrant." He told them that only a few people knew, and asked that they keep it secret for a while.

For the next six weeks not a murmur, whisper, tweet or status update suggested the teenagers guarded privileged information for Vargas, 30, a former Oracle editor-in-chief and a 2000 graduate of MVHS.

Kevin Troxell, a 17-year-old entertainment editor at the Oracle, says he saw the shock on Vargas' face after he told the teens that he was undocumented. "He seemed surprised to tell us. He kind of put his hand over his mouth as if to say 'what did I just say?' ...Oracle is a tight knit group and we are all friends. He's a friend and an Oracle, and that was the reason we wanted to keep his secret."
> Vargas's revelations may be a victory for immigration advocates, but not for journalism
> Los Altos High School student paper posts video of Vargas Q&A