Warning: Spoilers ahead for Orange Is the New Black.
The seventh and final season of Orange Is the New Black is now on Netflix and it was episode 5, titled “Minority Deport,” the one that made a lasting impact on us. In that episode, Diane Guerrero is back as Maritza Ramos(after being absent on season six), with a storyline that, unfortunately, is far from fiction for many immigrants under the Trump administration.
Maritza, who at some point during season six’s timeline must have been released from prison, is at a bar when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid takes place. Although she claims she is a US citizen, she doesn’t have identification on her to prove it so she’s taken to a detention center. There, Maritza finds out that she was born in Colombia and brought to the US by her mother as a child — a fact her mom had hidden from her until now. Her friends in the detention center, including her BFF Flaca, try to help by connecting her with an immigrant-rights organization, but when she starts giving out the number to the other detainees so they too can get help, ICE agents at the detention center rush her deportation.
It’s the scene where Maritza is handcuffed and boarding an airplane full of other immigrants facing deportation that had us in tears. Can you imagine leaving the country you have known as home your entire life without having the chance to say goodbye to friends and family? Maritza didn’t get her day in court to prove her citizenship or a chance to get a lawyer, yet she’s being expelled to a country that is foreign to her, a reality that many deportees are living in the United States right now.
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