(Photograph by Gian Paul Lozza for TIME)

Jose Antonio Vargas’s TIME Magazine Cover

In June of 2012, Jose Antonio Vargas published a cover essay in the New York Times which proved to be momentous for the Dreamers movement. Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was born in the Philippines and raised in Mountain View, “came out” as being an undocumented immigrant. Vargas was inspired to write this essay after he heard of the “Trail of Dreams”. After taking his story to the national stage, Vargas shifted from mainstream journalist to immigrant rights advocate and started his own organization called “Define American” while also increasing his leadership and involvement in the DREAMers movement.^[14] Vargas wrote: “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…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.”^[15]