Celebs

The day after her parents were deported, a 14-year-old Diane Guerrero was back at the Boston Arts Academy

The Orange is the New Black actress recently visited her alma mater.

04/15/2016 -Boston, MA- Actress Diane Guerrero poses for a portrait before an interview at The Boston Globe in Boston, MA on April 15, 2016. Actress Diane Guerrero toured parts of Boston, Jamaica Plain and Roslindale with her lifelong friend, Stephanie Bolivar (cq), and members of the Boston Globe staff. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) section: Lifestyle reporter: Guerra Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

By Kristin Toussaint

1 minute to read

One day when Diane Guerrero was 14 years old, she came back from school to her Egleston Square home and her parents were gone—they had been detained and deported back to Colombia, an event she first detailed in a Los Angeles Times op-ed and now in her recently released book, In the Country We Love: My Family Divided.

But though her family went back to Colombia while Guerrero chose to stay in the U.S., she had her friends and their families, of course, and she had the Boston Arts Academy.

Boston Arts was the first place Guerrero, now 29, went on the day after immigration officials raided her home, the actress told The Boston Globe. Last month, she revisited her alma mater to talk to theater students about both her career and her personal hardships.

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“If I didn’t make it out [to the school] sooner,” Guerrero told the students, according to the Globe, “it’s because this school means so much to me. And I felt I wasn’t ready. … I want to be worthy of this school.”

Guerrero, who has starring roles on Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, has used her experiences to promote immigration reform. She volunteers with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Mi Familia Vota, and in 2015 she was named a White House ambassador for citizenship and naturalization.

Linda Nathan, the academy’s founding headmaster, assured her she would be able to stay in school and get an education—Guerrero was the only member of her family born on U.S. soil and, thus, a citizen—when federal authorities offered no help, she said.

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Her situation isn’t all that rare, either. When speaking at Boston Arts, a student related to Guerrero’s circumstances.

“I think you’re very strong,” the student said, according to the Globe. “My mom and stepdad are illegal. So every day I do fear that they’re going to get taken from me.”

Read the full Globe story here.

 

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