Growing up, Diane Guerrero was terrified of arriving home to an empty house. From a young age, she knew that might mean that her parents and brother—none of whom were U.S. citizens, though Guerrero is one—had been detained. When Guerrero was 14 years old, that fear became reality as her brother was detained and deported—followed by her parents, who had been trying for years to secure their family’s citizenship. Before Guerrero was old enough to get a learner’s permit, the U.S. government had sent her parents thousands miles away, to Colombia—leaving her to fend for herself.

“I just thought my life was over,” Guerrero said in a recent interview. “There’s this feeling of loss, and it’s so horrible to think that a child is in this state of limbo of saying, Okay, now what happens with me?”

That’s the question that looms over Maritza Ramos, the character Guerrero plays on Orange Is the New Black, in the prison drama’s final season, which recently debuted on Netflix. After being released from prison, the show’s bubbly “Colombian Barbie” is caught clubbing without an ID. Officers bring her to an ICE detention center, where she eventually discovers that despite what her mother told her, she is not a U.S. citizen—which puts her at the mercy of the U.S. penal system. Maritza’s detention reunites her with Blanca (Laura Gómez), who successfully fights for her own release with help from an attorney. But Maritza is not so lucky: Midway through the season, she’s deported to Colombia, a country she’s never so much as visited. As Maritza and her fellow deported detainees wait for their flight to take off, they fade and disappear one by one. That is the last we ever see of Maritza Ramos.

Ramos’s story mirrors the lives of thousands of people like Guerrero: families who arrive in this country looking for a better life, many fleeing unthinkable circumstances. The problem has only gotten worse in recent years, as Donald Trump—who began his campaign by making racist remarks about Mexican immigrants—has maintained a stance of open persecution and slander aimed at immigrants of color. His rhetoric about an immigrant “invasion” was echoed by the shooter who entered an El Paso Walmart on Saturday with one goal: to kill “as many Mexicans as possible.” Twenty-two people died. (Guerrero spoke to V.F. before the shooting occurred.)

It’s only natural that Orange Is the New Black, a show long focused on the hypocrisies of our correctional system, would tackle a story like this one. “Considering everything that’s happening in our country and the heated debates about who a human is, I really wanted to take the opportunity to humanize these stories,” Guerrero said. “I thought it was brave, and they sure did their research.” Everything she saw on the show squared with her own experience with the penal system: “I can remember visiting my mother in jail and how horrifying that was,” Guerrero said. “Visiting my dad, and my dad not having any toothpaste…my mother not having any sanitary napkins. Those kinds of things are very real. I remember being a little girl and talking to my mom through a glass window…I remember how heartbreaking it was.”

It took Guerrero years to feel comfortable telling this part of her story publicly. She first shared it in a 2014 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, which quickly went viral. At first, Guerrero didn’t want to be known as “the poster child for deportation,” to be attacked or used by the media as a source of trauma porn. “I didn’t want to be abused in that way more than I already had to be,” Guerrero said, “because I was coming out very vulnerable, very raw, very open. And I didn’t want to be taken advantage that way. I also wanted to advance in my career, and I wanted for people to see that I am more than just my circumstance.” Over time, however, Guerrero came into herself more as an artist and an advocate; she eventually wrote a memoir, In the Country We Love.

Now, with a wide variety of characters under her belt—including roles on Jane the Virgin, Superior Donuts, and Doom Patrol—Guerrero knows things are different. “I’ve done other roles that don’t have to do [with] prison,” she quipped. “I’ve shown myself that of course I can do this work, and I can tell different stories. Of course I can be an advocate. Of course I can be a partner, a friend, a human being, and care about others. I’ve shown that, and so there’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

Guerrero is still dealing with the psychological fallout from her family’s separation; she struggles with trust and anger issues, and as she wrote in her book, she often felt worthless—emotions that led, for a while, to self-harm and drinking. But she has also found a good therapist, and as her career has blossomed, Guerrero says activism has become a part of her healing process. She speaks at universities, has volunteered with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center—an organization that helps immigrants mobilize and provides technical assistance to immigration law practitioners—and she speaks to young people whose own families have been separated. Guerrero wants to remind these kids and teens that they’re not alone, that they have rights—and, more importantly, value as human beings.

For those wondering, Guerrero’s parents do watch Orange Is the New Black from Colombia—although they have yet to see this season. “But my dad said that he went into his orthodontist, and he mentioned that he saw the season, and then was telling my dad all these incredible things,” Guerrero said. “He’s so proud of me, and he’s so happy that I’ve incorporated this work that I’m so passionate about with my art—with something that frees me. I feel like I’ve been able to combine the two, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do.”

But though she takes regular visits to Colombia, Guerrero will never have the casual closeness with her parents that many take for granted. The deportation essentially killed their family unit, Guerrero said, and her relationships with her parents are now, in some ways, frozen in time. “I know my mother from when I was a child, but that’s not a relationship that I need with her right now,” Guerrero said. “I need a relationship with her as an adult, and [that] could only really be achieved by growing with someone. And I didn’t grow with her.”

“I want my mother,” she continued. “I want that relationship with her so badly, and I don’t get to have that.”

The cruel irony is that Guerrero also feels lucky to have lived with her parents until she was 14, given how many children like her get separated from their families earlier in childhood, or even as infants.

“That’s what I think about now,” Guerrero said. “Our kids who are growing up without their folks—what that does to their developmental process, for them and the parents. And it’s so sad, but that’s the reality with me, to be absolutely candid with you. That’s what happened with the relationship, and it’s something that I’m constantly trying to work on. But the damage is done. The damage is done.”