Orange is the New Black star Diane Guerrero, who plays the incarcerated Maritza Ramos on the hit Netflix series, has shared her personal nightmare of her parents and brother being deported back to Colombia when she was just 14 years old.
Guerrero wrote an op/ed for LA Times and followed it up with an appearance on CNN’s New Day, recalling the day she came home to her parents’ cars in the driveway but no one home.
“Dinner was started and the lights were on, but I couldn’t find them,” she explained.
“Throughout my childhood I watched my parents try to become legal but to no avail. They lost their money to people they believed to be attorneys, but who ultimately never helped,” she wrote in her op/ed. “That meant my childhood was haunted by the fear that they would be deported. If I didn't see anyone when I walked in the door after school, I panicked.”
During Guerrero’s chat with Michaela Pereira, she said she only gets to see her family once a year when she visits them in Colombia.
She’s an activist and a voice for children like her who are born in the U.S. but get separated from their families. “Not a single person at any level of government took any note of me," she wrote. "No one checked to see if I had a place to live or food to eat, and at 14, I found myself basically on my own.”
Guerrero hopes to keep a dialog going about this issue, explaining “I think people don’t want to see families separated. I don’t think people just want to deport everyone, and that’s the solution. That’s not a solution. What about me? What about us, the kids who stay here without their families?”
image via INFphoto.com