‘One Day at a Time,’ ‘Vida’ staffs team up to help fight family separation

The Trump administration’s polarizing “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which — until the president signed an executive order on Wednesday to halt the practice — had separated hundreds of children from their parents who had entered the U.S. illegally, has prompted two TV series to take action.

The writing staffs of Netflix’s “One Day at a Time” and Starz’s “Vida,” both Latinx-centric shows, have teamed up to “end family separation at the border,” as “One Day at a Time” executive producer Gloria Calderón Kellett wrote Tuesday on Twitter to her more than 18,000 followers.

“We are a show that talks about immigration. How can we be silent about it?” Calderón Kellett told The Times on Wednesday.

“Vida” showrunner Tanya Saracho, noting the tent cities that have sprouted in Texas to house scores of immigrant children, proclaimed: “We have to do something.”

The two shows’ writing staffs have encouraged people to donate to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a nonprofit Texas organization raising funds for legal assistance and to help parents post bond out of immigration jails.

“Look, I cannot claim to be heroic here. We’re just writing checks — I’m clicking and entering credit card information,” Calderón Kellett said. “I am not boots on the ground in Texas — it’s just impossible for me because we’re in production. But I really want to lift up the people who are there and doing the work.”

To help drum up support, both teams also challenged the writing staffs of “Jane the Virgin,” the veteran CW dramedy, and “Grand Hotel,” ABC’s upcoming prime-time soap, to join the campaign.

It’s the latest call to arms from Hollywood over the immigration policy. Recent days have seen luminaries such as Judd Apatow, Seth MacFarlane and Steve Levitan criticize Fox News over its coverage of the issue.

On Tuesday, director Ava DuVernay posted a photo of herself as a child with the message: “I look at myself as a girl and imagine having to travel unsafely in a quest for safety. Be forcibly separated from my mother. Caged with people I don’t know and who don’t know me. Alone in a world I don’t understand. Imagine this for the child you were. We cannot allow this.”

Gloria Calderon Kellett.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times )

Calderón Kellett, who is at work on production of Season 3 of “One Day at a Time,” said the issue skews closely to her own family’s story. Her parents came to the U.S. in 1962 as part of the Pedro Pan exodus from Cuba.

“My parents were held in centers when they came from Cuba,” she said. “My mom is 70-years-old, and she still talks about being 15 in these camps when they were waiting — which were warm and loving camps; this was a completely different scenario.

“But she says at night, she remembers the sound of all the children crying because they miss their parents,” Calderón Kellett added. “And she was a 15-year-old girl and she still holds onto it! I cannot imagine what children, little children, are experiencing and the trauma this will have on them forever.”

Calderón Kellett emphasized that support is still be needed even after Trump signed an executive order to stop the separations.

“We’ve consulted with an attorney ... the process of reuniting families and the lawyer fees to defend them and make sure [parents] are not deported before they’re reunited with their child — this all still requires an extensive amount of financial support,” Calderón Kellett said.

The most-read Entertainment stories this hour »

yvonne.villarreal@latimes.com

Twitter: @villarrealy

Update 12:59 p.m.: This post has been updated throughout with additional comments from “One Day at a Time” showrunner Gloria Calderon Kellett.

UPDATES:

1:30 p.m.: This article was updated with quotes from Gloria Calderon Kellett and information about Trump signing an executive order to halt his immigration policy.

This article was originally published at 9:15 a.m.