Jose Antonio Vargas is done coming out of the closet -- he's done it twice already. The first time the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist came out, it had to do with his sexuality. The second time, he told the world about his precarious life as an undocumented immigrant in the United States. He speaks Monday at UW, but was kind enough to chat with Seattle Weekly earlier this week.

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Less than a week after the Border Patrol was hit with a class action lawsuit, the agency is facing a new challenge. Yesterday, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed a complaint with the federal departments of Justice and Homeland Security, charging that agents' practice of acting as "interpreters"--while at the same time interrogating people about their immigration status--is a civil rights violation.

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Illegal immigration from Mexico is reportedly on the decline, but Gian Carlo Perrotti may boost the stats for illicit Canadian border crossings all by himself. The Canadian was recently caught trying to sneak across the border into Washington, and will now likely be deported. Let's just say this isn't the first time he's gotten his ticket home paid for by Uncle Sam.

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Three Olympic Peninsula residents filed a class action suit against the Border Patrol yesterday that promises to finally provide a formal airing for charges that agents are illegally stopping people based on race rather than reasonable suspicion.

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Last fall, Washington Growers League executive director Mike Gempler got talking to a couple of Mexican brothers working on a farm in Naches, west of Yakima. Like many immigrants, the brothers were ambitious, Gempler says. They were attending community college. But they had nevertheless decided to go back to their fishing village in Mexico.

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Where's the evidence? That's the question OneAmerica's Kendra Anderson says she and her co-workers would get in meetings with the Border Patrol when they raised allegations of racial profiling and other abuses along the northern border. Well, now the immigrant rights group says it has evidence: 135 stories that it has collected in a year's worth of research.

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The ICE program with the reassuring name "Secure Communities" took effect Tuesday in all 39 Washington counties, despite objections from activist groups claiming the effort to fingerprint and deport undocumented immigrants erodes community trust in law enforcement, costs taxpayers money, and disproportionally targets individuals who are only guilty of traffic violations or other minor offenses.

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The state Department of Social and Health Services tells Seattle Weekly it isn't going to cut off food stamp benefits to immigrants just yet, even though a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this week allows it to do so. Good thing, because the ruling reinforces a travesty.

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Last month, the Forks Human Rights Group asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for an investigation into Border Patrol practices on the Olympic Peninsula. Yesterday, Napolitano got a letter from a much broader group: a coalition of organizations across northern border states.

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After a turbulent 2011, the Border Patrol's outpost on the Olympic Peninsula is under fire again. On Friday, community members form Forks penned a letter to Janet Napolitano, asking the Department of Homeland Security secretary to "investigate and put an end to unlawful practices," by Border Patrol agents in the town made famous by Twilight.

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