Actress Diane Guerrero to speak on undocumented immigrants, new memoir

Diane Guerrero was 14 when her family was taken from her.

She came home from a day of high school to find her house empty, her undocumented family members having been taken by immigration services. Guerrero eventually learned her parents and older brother were deported to Colombia. She, as a citizen and a teenager, relied on her friends to raise her until she was able to live on her own.

“I am a child of a mixed-status family,” Guerrero said. “What I try to do is be open about who I am so we can have open and honest dialogue about who an immigrant is, and who an undocumented person is, and how we live in this country.”

The actress, who stars on “Jane the Virgin” and “Orange Is the New Black,” will speak at UCLA this week about her struggle with her family’s deportation and her memoir “In the Country We Love: My Family Divided.” The event, “A Night with Diane Guerrero,” will take place at the Grand Horizon Room in Ackerman Union on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

“(My book) is mostly the story of a girl – a citizen girl – who had a dream and who fed into the American promise, and followed that to a T and followed that hope, which is what I am today,” Guerrero said.

The idea for the event came in May when Monica Hanna, the resident director of UCLA Residential Life, attended a program at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Guerrero spoke about her memoir at the event.

She was starting to visit college campuses so Hanna got in contact with other schools at which Guerrero spoke, like UC Riverside, and decided to organize a similar event for UCLA students.

In her talks, Guerrero discusses undocumented immigrants and mental health, which Hanna said she thinks will resonate with many students on campus.

Karina Salcido, an administrative assistant at UCLA’s Undocumented Students Program, which collaborated on organizing the program, believes the event will help humanize the undocumented community. She said the issue has become a desensitized topic because of the media.

“As a result of Trump’s election, the undocumented and immigrant community is under attack, and I feel like some people feel uncertain of what is coming,” she said. “So having someone like Diane Guerrero speak about what she has gone through allows us to see that through a firsthand account.”

Salcido said she wants students and allies to be aware that the lack of immigration reform is a problem that affects every class and group of people in the United States, including celebrities like Guerrero.

Reina Flores, a first-year psychobiology student, first became a fan of Guerrero by watching her on “Jane the Virgin” and “Orange Is the New Black.” Last quarter, however, she learned more about the actress while working on a research project for her English class.

She came across one of Guerrero’s op-eds in which she spoke about her family’s deportation. She said it was impactful to see Guerrero use her influence to help others.

Flores’ mother was an undocumented immigrant until she gained her citizenship in 2012, Flores said. She’s familiar with the way Guerrero felt growing up, where she said she was surrounded by peers whose parents were born in the United States and had a college background.

“I always felt like I was different,” Flores said. “But I think that the values (my mom) instilled in me came from that journey that she took to give me a better life.”

Chris Perez, a first-year environmental science student, is looking forward to the event not only because he thinks Guerrero is a talented actress, but also because she is speaking out for immigrant communities and the Latinx community.

Perez also relates to Guerrero’s story on a personal level. He has two aunts in Michigan who are undocumented and who, he says, live in fear every day.

“If they get pulled over, they could get deported,” he said. “Any little mistake they make could force them to leave their lives here and their children who were born here.”

Guerrero’s fight for racial equality is part of the reason that Perez is a fan.

Guerrero is advocating for immigration reform in the United States, she said, and can relate to the constant fear some people are currently facing. Immigrants make many contributions to America, and they don’t get the recognition they deserve, she said.

Especially when President Donald Trump’s administration criticized the immigrant community, she felt it was important to combat the negative stereotypes of undocumented immigrants, like when he called citizens like her “anchor babies.” Immigrants bring value to the United States, and more people need to speak out if they have the ability to, she said. She has been combatting these fallacies by showing that the children of immigrants are valuable and hardworking.

She believes that for this to happen, people need to stop ignoring racial bias in the United States, because that is part of the problem.

“We need to make the topic of race a bigger issue for people to talk about and understand,” Guerrero said. “We need to figure out why socially, economically and racially we are where we are. The world is not just black and white. It’s black and white and brown and Asian.”

Guerrero is passionate about sharing her story with college students because she wants to give faith to those who feel as though they are in hopeless situations, she said. She does not want students to feel alone, as she did when she was their age.

“I suffered a lot because my parents were taken away from me,” Guerrero said. “But ultimately, I am here and being here is one of the greatest gifts I have in my life.”