I feel like you can't really be truthful as an artist and empathize with the human experience, unless you know your truth and you're not living a lie. So I'm learning through it, and it's making me a better person, and it's making me a better artist, I think.

After a while, you're growing up so quickly and you begin to not know your parents anymore. You're left with the memories you had as a kid, but you're not a kid anymore and your experiences are separate. We are now much closer and communicate almost every day. It's a lot of work, but what holds us together is the hope that we will one day be together again.

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.

I feel like there's this misconception that immigrants come here and just don't care about the system and paying taxes, and that's not true. My father was desperately trying to be a legal contributor to this society.

I broke down. I hid under the bed because I was afraid that somebody was going to come for me. I don’t know who that someone was but I was just so scared. Not a single person at any level of government took any note of me. 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.

When there are deportations, you better believe there are families involved - there are parents being separated from their children. It doesn't reflect our values as Americans, and I don't think it fixes the issue. I think there would be a lot of advantages to creating paths to citizenship for people who are already working here so they are contributing to our economy.

I spent a long time in the shadows. I always had this feeling that I was the only one going through stuff, because I kept it a secret. Once I decided to use my voice in a way that could potentially help others, I found there were a lot of people like me - a lot of kids left behind. So, I wanted to call attention to the issue.