In an interview with CNN on Monday, “Orange Is The New Black” actress Diane Guerrero was brought to tears on-air as she described the deportation of her family when she was a teenager.
“I got home, and their cars were there and dinner was started and the lights were on, but I couldn’t find them,” Guerrero told host Michaela Pereira.
Guerrero explained that at age 14, she had arrived home from her performing arts school only to find her parents had been removed from the house. They were eventually sent to Colombia.
The actress broke down when she said the separation had caused her to feel alienated from her own family.
“It’s tough, it’s like we’ve been separated for so long, I feel like sometimes we don’t know each other,” she said. “It’s difficult because I’ve grown up without them, and there’s things about them that are new that I don’tah recognize, and it just — it hurts.”
Guerrero also recently wrote about the ordeal in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times amid speculation over possible executive actions on immigration by President Obama.
“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.”
Watch below, courtesy of CNN:
