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Journalist, activist, and co-founder of DefineAmerican.com, Jose Antonio Vargas learned that he was an undocumented immigrant at age 16. Today he and others are telling their stories and helping to educate people about the real lives being caught up  in the political and legal fights over U.S. immigration policy.

In June 2011, following in the footsteps of Arizona, Alabama governor Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signed into law an anti-immigrant bill more extreme than Arizona’s S.B. 1070. Following its enactment, Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that “House Bill 56 [in Alabama] is designed to do nothing more than terrorize the state’s Latino community.”

Despite setbacks, legal challenges are continuing against the Alabama law and organizers are working to build support throughout the state to fight back and protect the civil and human rights of people in communities being targeted.