Dozens of Hollywood stars, including Pedro Pascal, Madonna, Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, America Ferrera, Elliot Page and Jane Fonda, have signed an open letter calling on the federal government to close the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where ICE is holding children and their parents. The open letter begins with the declaration: “No child should be locked up in an immigration detention center.”
The Hollywood celebrities join figures like Rachel, the children’s entertainment figure who made headlines earlier this month by meeting with detained children via video chat and vowing to fight to shut down Dilly. Additional signatories of the new open letter include John Legend, Brandi Carlyle, Hannah Einbinder, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Porter, Kike Palmer, Hasan Minhaj, Katie Couric, Susan Sarandon and dozens more.
In Dilley, “children complain of limited education, lights that won’t turn off, and moldy food,” according to NBC News. Amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, “more than 2,300 children” have been detained with their parents, “the vast majority in Dilley, according to figures provided by court-appointed monitors. Many have been detained for weeks or even months.”
“Children in immigration detention endure trauma, neglect, and conditions that violate basic standards of health, safety, dignity, and human rights,” the open letter reads. “Acts of abuse against children brought to court include denial of clean water, rotten food contaminated with parasites, unsafe medical neglect, lack of sleep, denial of legal representation, separation of children from their families, and retaliation against families who protest inhumane conditions. Children belong in schools and playgrounds, not in detention centres.”
The letter goes on to say, “We call on the federal government and CoreCivic to immediately close the Dilley facility, return children and families to the homes and communities they were removed from, and end child incarceration now. Our work does not end with closure. We demand transparency, accountability, and systemic reform to prevent these abuses from happening anywhere in the United States.”
Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Acaso, first learned about Dilley after federal agents detained the father of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minneapolis and transferred them to Dilley. She recently had a video call with 9-year-old Dever Henao Jimenez, who was detained in Dilley with his parents in early March. It was her second video call with a detained child, the first being with a 5-year-old named Gale.
“It was incredibly realistic to look at this adorable little face and feel like I was on the phone with someone in prison. It saddened me and was something I never thought I would encounter in my life…We’re trying to get a kid out of prison to do a spelling bee. I never thought the words would mesh,” Acaso told NBC News.
