Rachel Accurso, a prominent children’s entertainer known as “Ms. Rachel,” told NBC News in a recent interview that she is currently fighting to shut down the Dilley Immigration Detention Center in south Texas, where ICE is holding children and their parents. Accurso said she first learned about Dilley after federal agents detained the father of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minneapolis and sent the two to Dilley.
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.”
Accurso recently had a video call with 9-year-old Daybell Henao Jimenez, who was detained with his parents in Dilley in early March. It was the second video call she had with a detained child, the first being with a 5-year-old named Gale.
“Oh, it’s such a shame,” Accurso, wearing her trademark Rachel costume, told Jimenez in a video call. “There are a lot of people who want to help.”
“I want to get out of here and go to the spelling bee,” Jimenez told her.
“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.
Accurso is now working with lawyers and immigration activists to “close Dilley and ensure that these children and their parents are returned to the communities where they belong.”
As Ms. Rachel, a singing educator, Accurso has amassed a huge online following, starting on YouTube and then moving to Netflix. But her decision to speak out on political issues last year sparked a backlash against the role children’s entertainers should play in world politics. For example, Ms. Accurso works as an advocate for children in the Gaza Strip, leading to accusations that she focuses on Palestinian youth rather than Israelis. Accurso maintains that all children are equal. She was accused of anti-Semitism in January after she liked a comment on her Instagram account that read, “Free America from Jews.” Accurso said the “like” was a coincidence, telling her followers: “I’m a human who makes mistakes.”
Accurso told NBC News that the controversy she received after speaking out in support of children in Gaza has led to threats against her family. She was initially worried that getting dragged into a fight with ICE here in the U.S. would only fuel the backlash against her, but after learning about Dilley, she couldn’t stay silent.
“I’m a politician,” Accurso told the press. “It is political to believe that children deserve love and care, that all children are equal, and that our care should not stop at appearances, family, religion, or national borders.”
