My job as an actor is to be visible and to tell stories.
I am representing my community, in a sense, especially given the fact that there are not as many Latino actors out there.
As much as it's been difficult to tell my story over and over again, it has been the best thing that has ever happened to me.
My family is broken.
My parents instilled a lot of American values in me. They encouraged me to work hard and told me that anything was possible for me because I was a citizen.
We need to be investing in resources, like Women Step Forward, to provide immigrants with trusted information about their rights and options.
Deporting asylum seekers back to violence does not reflect the values of our country.
We have a lot of comments on the news, we have a lot of rhetoric over what an immigrant is and what a deportee is, but you don't hear any real stories. I don't think we ever had the chance to really tell our side.
I loved to sing and dance and play-act, and I always believed that my dream to become an actor would come true because my immigrant parents had taught me to believe in the American dream.
I dreamed of being an artist.
I always wanted to, to the smallest detail, make my parents proud.
It's important that we vote, because this is how we can bring about change and bring about reform, and, honestly, I don't see Donald Trump, anything that he's saying to be effective or comprehensive. Instead of really uniting our country - we are the United States of America - he is dividing us.
I think people want immigration reform. I think people want to see a path for citizenship. I don't think we as a country want to discuss this in the way we do. I don't think we want to separate families. I don't think that's part of our values.
I've experienced colorism in that way: where if you're lighter, then you'll potentially be accepted into society better than if you were darker-skinned.
Some people have issues in their past that might make them tweak out at certain moments, but it's possible to snap back and be a real human being.
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.
I can be very moody.
All of the characters on 'Doom Patrol' explore traumatic pasts, how to deal with those pasts, and how that affects their present and their future.
When you watch 'Doom Patrol,' you'll see most of the characters are trying to run away from their feelings and their emotions, and the minute they take a second and look at themselves face to face, that's when things can actually get resolved and get one step closer to peace.
I want to be viewed like a serious actress, and I'm afraid that people are just going to see me as the poor little girl whose parents were deported when she was 14.
