Today, Diane Guerrero is known as a successful Hollywood star, with roles in Orange is the New Black, Superior Donuts and Jane the Virgin.

However, as the child of undocumented parents, she found her life ripped apart when they were taken away when she was just 14.

“I would have had a much different story to tell if I had been imprisoned after being separated from my family, without a warm bed and only the cold faces of ICE agents and the crinkly feeling of a Mylar blanket,” she said during an immigration rally on Saturday in Washington DC. “I was lucky enough to be with my parents until I was 14. Having my parents tell me that I could do anything That I was special. And that I matter.”

Fighting back tears, she continued on: “I don’t know why I was lucky enough to have people in my community take me in, to be able to continue school or why I was lucky enough to find work or to go to college. I do know that kind of luck is one in a million…I also know I wouldn’t have been so lucky if I had been among today’s generation of children who will be irreversibly damaged by our government’s actions.”

In a 2014 op-ed, Guerrero recalled the time after her family was deported leaving her alone as a young teen.

“One day, my fears were realized. I came home from school to an empty house. Lights were on and dinner had been started, but my family wasn’t there. Neighbors broke the news that my parents had been taken away by immigration officers, and just like that, my stable family life was over,” she recalled in the op-ed.

She also told her story about deportation to Chelsea Handler.

Speaking at the rally on Saturday, Guerrero, who said at the beginning of her speech that the separation “is forever” asked the crowd, “How many more children are we willing to subject to a lifetime of pain?”

She added: “We are now in a moment where we can no longer be blind to the blatant disregard of human life.”

Watch above, via NBC

[image via screengrab]

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