Orange Is the New Black Actress Family Deported
Diane Guerrero didn't plan on condign an clearing advocate. When she was just 14, her family was deported to Colombia, leaving her alone in the United States to figure out her future at a young age.
"I experienced a very full childhood, so when it was taken away, it was like the wind had been knocked out of me," Guerrero told HuffPost in an interview. "I couldn't wait to learn how to drive. I couldn't wait to get to prom. I couldn't look to sing in my senior recital and have my parents see that, and, unfortunately, that fourth dimension never came."
Now, seeing news headlines that mirror her own story of deportation and family unit separation, the 33-twelvemonth-old thespian uses her platform to demand political reform, shift the narrative on clearing and stand up for her community.
"We've seen and so many attacks on our community, from the 700 people who were detained in Mississippi, most of them parents, to the attacks in El Paso and the children in cages that'due south been happening for two years," Guerrero said. "Information technology'due south incredible that people still are not able to run across how this is wrong and how nosotros demand to alter the system."
Decades afterward, the "Orange Is the New Black" star is still reeling from the trauma of her family unit's deportation. Since she was a young child, her parents had been candid with her almost their undocumented status. Guerrero, who has birthright citizenship, lived in fear that 1 day she would return dwelling to detect her family unit gone — a fear that eventually materialized.
"The first affair that a child feels regardless of the facts is that it is their error," Guerrero said. "In any circumstances, whether the child stays behind or the child has to go dorsum, it'south that — they internalize it."
She says her path to stardom has been "pure luck" and suggests in that location could have been many unlike outcomes to her journey following the trauma of her babyhood. She says the sound of the phone ringing or of sirens outside fabricated her uneasy from a immature age. The constant anxiety about her family'southward fate haunted her.
"I internalized it and said, 'What did I do? What did I do to make this happen?'" Guerrero said. "And and then you live your life sort of walking on eggshells, fearing that your life is just going to implode at any minute or that y'all'll ... ruin somebody else's life."
Paul Morigi via Getty Images
Guerrero uses this trauma in her piece of work to advocate for immigrant communities, to promote awareness about the flaws in the immigration arrangement and tell the stories of families like her own who merely wanted a ameliorate life for themselves.
"Do yous really remember my fight is about open borders?" Guerrero said. "Absolutely not. It's near comprehensive immigration reform. Information technology's nigh starting a new organization that is going to work because the organisation that is in place at the moment — it is set upwardly to fail."
Guerrero got her start equally an actor by taking classes and auditioning for people's music videos in their backyards. She submitted herself for "anything and everything," eager to see but how far she could go.
"At that place's times where you're non where you want to be. It's hard when you lot commencement seeing people that are 'making it,' whatever that means to you lot, but information technology'south a process," said Guerrero, who penned a memoir, "In the Country We Love," in 2016. "And if you respect the work and you lot respect yourself, then yous'll take your fourth dimension."
In 2013, she landed the function of Maritza Ramos in the hit Netflix series "Orange Is the New Blackness." Maritza is an inmate at Litchfield Penitentiary who finds herself in a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility past Season seven, which was released on the streaming service in late July.
Maritza's story, along with those of several other inmates, depicts the heartbreaking reality for immigrants in detention facilities, and it's not far off from Guerrero's ain story.
Courtesy of NETFLIX
"I was inspired by Jenji Kohan and the creators of the show and also my incredible castmates who are also and so outspoken about bug they're passionate most," Guerrero said. "I was very motivated to speak about my life and be a source of change in my ain manner."
Most recently, she played a misfit superhero named Crazy Jane in the start season of "Doom Patrol," a DC Universe comic show. Her character has 64 personalities and 64 superpowers to match, which has allowed her to explore the many facets of the human psyche and the importance of mental health.
Guerrero is also known for playing Lina on "Jane the Virgin," a heartwarming, comedic telenovela about a Venezuelan-American author who is accidentally artificially inseminated and becomes pregnant.
"For a long time, this country has had a problem imagining anyone other than white people have everyday normal experiences, to fantastical to the most traumatic."
- Diane Guerrero, role player and immigration advocate
For Guerrero, playing these wildly different roles ways that she gets to break stereotypes and reverberate what the earth and what her customs in particular actually wait like.
"I played an inmate at a jail because that is a real story," Guerrero said. "On the other hand, another real story is a young woman who wants to exist a writer, who tin can experience artificial insemination in the weirdest way. For a long time, this country has had a problem imagining anyone other than white people have everyday normal experiences, to fantastical to the most traumatic."
The millions of viewers who spotter Guerrero take on these different roles learn about the bug that touch on immigrants, whether that's traditional Hispanic cultural values or the prison system. Guerrero said she has received feedback from friends and family unit who have been educated through her roles on pop television shows.
Without a strong community and a support organisation of family and friends who took intendance of her, Guerrero said, she wouldn't be where she is today. She also credits her mother, male parent and brother for pedagogy her powerful values from their Colombian heritage.
Tina Turnbow
"They showed me a world of possibilities, and that really stuck with me," Guerrero said. "My dad would e'er show me to concord my head up loftier when I'yard dancing because that is to prove security and to prove power and elegance."
Guerrero said she hopes her work reaches out to children and people with like experiences as her own and lets them know they have an entire community backside them that understands their pain.
"My community is represented in me and everything that I do," Guerrero said. "So that's what I love the near out of being the thespian. I know little girls tin await at me and encounter me and say, 'Oh, I recognize that honey.'"
And hopefully her interim, storytelling and advocacy will motivate others to stand upwards for themselves and seek aid when they need it.
"The most important affair you tin can practise for yourself is requite yourself a chance," Guerrero said. "That's exactly what I did. … You don't have to showtime out knowing all of these things or existence the best. You have a place in this world."
Nuestras Voces Unidas (Our Voices United) is a HuffPost series created to honour Hispanic Heritage Month and amplify the diverse voices within the community. Detect all of our coverage here.
Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/diane-guerrero-family-deportation-immigration-oitnb_n_5d766dcbe4b075210230889d
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