Ms. Rachel is using her star power as a children’s entertainer for another political purpose: getting kids out of ICE detention centers.
The popular figure, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, also has been a fierce advocate for children enduring war in Gaza, a move that has invited controversy and accusations that she is picking sides in global conflicts.
Now, she is raising awareness of children and their parents who are being detained in ICE detention centers — particularly in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas, where conditions are bleak for families.
She started fighting for the detention facility’s closure after federal agents in Minneapolis detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, shown in a widely circulated photo wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, and his father, and sent them both to Dilley.
She also had video calls with a 9-year-old named Deiver Henao Jimenez, who was detained with his parents in early March.
“It was unbelievably surreal to see this sweet little face and feel like I was on a call with somebody who’s in jail,” Accurso told NBC News after she spoke with Deiver. “It broke me, and it was something I never thought I’d encounter in life.”
According to NBC, the Trump administration has placed more than 2,300 children and their parents into ICE facilities, and most of them are being held at Dilley. Detainees have complained about feeling anxious and unable to eat, and some have suffered medical emergencies.
Ms. Rachel said she is working with lawyers and immigration advocates to shut Dilley down “and make sure that kids and their parents are back in their communities where they belong.”
In response to critics who say she frequently picks sides, she has said, “I see all children as precious and equal.”