Ella Scott
Popular children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel has detailed an ‘unbelievably surreal’ conversation she had with a child detained inside an ICE facility, pleading with lawmakers to ‘let him out’.
Rachel Anne Accurso, better known as Ms Rachel, is an American educator and activist who makes toddler learning videos for her 19.3 million YouTube subscribers.
The 43-year-old has been extremely vocal in her support for children in Gaza, claiming in the past that caring for young people in Palestine ‘is a direct continuation of the work [she’s] been doing most of [her] life’.
“We don't care about only some of our students because of where those students were born, we care about every one of them,” she added, as per NewsWeek.
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The entertainer has recently disclosed that she is also making efforts to close down the controversial Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.
The remote ICE detention facility, run by private prison firm CoreCivic, has been open since 2014 and has come under fire for what human rights advocates have described as ‘inhumane conditions’, as per NBC News.
Up to 2,400 detainees, mainly women and children, can be housed in the facility, according to the publication, with some being confined for several weeks or months.
Deiver Henao Jimenez, a nine-year-old boy who was detained at Dilley with his parents in March, recently spoke to Accurso via video link.
He told her he wanted to leave the facility as soon as possible so that he could attend a spelling bee, as well as expressing that he missed his friends.
The child is the second Dilley resident that the activist has spoken to, following her call with a five-year-old named Gael, Variety reported.
“It was unbelievably surreal to see this sweet little face and feel like I was on a call with somebody who’s in jail,” she told NBC News.
“It broke me, and it was something I never thought I’d encounter in life… We’re trying to get a child out of a jail to do a spelling bee. I just never thought those words would go together.”
Accurso has since uploaded her conversation with Jimenez to Instagram.
She also included a caption which read: “I can’t express how it felt to talk to a 9 year old who is in an immigration detention center. It was devastating.
“Please let Deiver Henao out now so he can go back to his spelling bee. Let his family back into their community. This is cruelty.”
Following the heartbreaking phone call, Accurso told NBC News that she is working with lawyers and immigration activists ‘to close Dilley and make sure that kids and their parents are back in their communities where they belong’.
Accurso also claimed she was initially hesitant to get involved with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns due to the backlash she has faced online for her activism in recent months.
“I am political,” Accurso added the news outlet.
“It’s political to believe that children are worthy of love and care, and that every child is equal, and that our care shouldn’t stop at what we look like, our family, at our religion, at a border.”