‘I am political’: Children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel fights to close Texas ICE facility

"I am political," she told NBC. "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."

Rachel Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel, took a break from lashing out against Israel over Gaza to tell NBC that she is trying to close the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas. Dilley recently made the news after a family with a 5-year-old son was detained in Minneapolis and ordered to be deported. In January, she liked an Instagram post that said "Free America from the Jews," though she later told followers it was an accident.

Accurso has been taking phone calls with children who are detained with their families at the center, which was opened under President Barack Obama. While on the call, she wears her Ms. Rachel costume. She has then posted the videos of those calls on her YouTube channel.

"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 said. "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."

According to ProPublica, the number of people detained at Dilley per day is about 100 people, which is down from 900 per day in January. The New York Times reports that only 53 children and 49 parents are currently being held at Dilley. Many of those who were there have gone back to their home nations after the Trump administration offered $2,600 and free transportation. Others were released back into the US as their immigration cases move forward.

It is one of two family detention centers in the immigration system, for a total of 3,230 beds. Leftists and Democrat politicians have been publicizing the difficulty of children who are detained with their families. These are children who were brought across the border illegally with or by their families or caregivers who are now in the process of being returned to their home countries along with their families.

One family currently being held at Dilley is the Egyptian family of Hayam El Gamal, who was charged with an antisemitic arson attack in Boulder, Colorado that killed one and injured 13 others. When the facility was opened in 2014, then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said "It will now be more likely that you will be apprehended, it will now be more likely that you will be detained and sent back."

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