Controversial kids’ YouTuber Ms. Rachel finally admitted that she is “political” as she spearheads a campaign to close a contested Texas immigration detention center that held 500 children at its peak.
The social media star, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, set up virtual calls with two young boys at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where a majority of the 2,300 detained children countrywide are held with at least one relative.
Accurso told NBC News that she is working in tandem with lawyers and immigration rights activists “to close Dilley and make sure that kids and their parents are back in their communities where they belong.”
“I am political. 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,” Accurso told the outlet.
In the meantime, she’s doing what she can to support the downtrodden tykes from afar.
During one call with 9-year-old Deiver Henao Jimenez, Accurso tried to console him.
“I don’t want to be here anymore. Nothing is good here,” Deiver, who was placed in the Dilley facility in early March, told Accurso.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. A lot of people want to try to help,” Accurso, acting as her online personality, Ms. Rachel, said in a high-pitched voice.
Deiver said that he wants “to leave and go to the spelling bee” — specifically, New Mexico’s state competition, which he qualified for before he was detained.
“It was unbelievably surreal to see this sweet little face and feel like I was on a call with somebody who’s in jail. It broke me, and it was something I never thought I’d encounter in life,” Accurso told the outlet.
Another boy Accurso spoke with, a 5-year-old named Gael, suffered from severe constipation in detention, as he could no longer follow his specialized diet. He is also nonverbal and struggled to engage with Accurso during their video call, the outlet reported.
About 50 children are still at the Dilley center as of late March, the outlet reported. In January, it housed as many as 500 minors, the New York Times reported.
The sharp decline follows months of backlash from human rights activists and members of Congress.
The facility became a hotspot for protest activity when Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy from Minneapolis, was briefly detained there with his father in January.
It has also made headlines for repeated complaints about inhumane conditions, including moldy food, and was the epicenter of a measles outbreak in February.
The Department of Homeland Security said that the reports of poor conditions were “mainstream media lies.”
The Dilley center was originally closed near the tail-end of the Biden administration. At the time, it was run by a private prison contractor and was “the most expensive facility in the national detention network.”
When the facility first opened during the Obama administration, it was used to detain families, but shifted to housing single adults from 2021 through the beginning of President Trump’s second term.
Accurso came under fire earlier this year after she admitted to liking a vile antisemitic Instagram comment calling for America to be “free from the Jews.”
