Children’s entertainer Rachel Accurso, better known as Ms. Rachel, is trying to help kids get out of ICE detention centers. As this great nation continues to keep innocent children locked away like prisoners, it takes a YouTube celebrity to stand up and say, “That’s wrong.”
As a part of her controversial crusade to treat children like human beings, she took a video call with Deiver Henao Jimenez, a detained 9-year-old.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” he said. “Nothing is good here.” Jimenez has been held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas with his parents since early March.
These ICE detention centers are part of aggressive immigration reform at the behest of the Trump administration. So far, over 2,300 children have been put into detention with their parents. The majority of those people are housed at Dilley, being held for weeks, sometimes months.
Dilley has numerous reports of moldy and worm-riddled food causing the children to lose weight. Struggles to receive basic medical care, like required medications. Not to mention the anxiety it causes to be locked in a detention center with guards on patrol.
Jimenez
Jimenez went on to tell Accurso that the food there hurt his stomach. Somehow, her conversation with the child became even more heartbreaking when it turned to school. Like most kids, Jimenez misses his friends, but he also may miss a spelling bee. Before he was detained, he won his school’s spelling bee and placed 3rd at regionals. This success nabbed the 9-year-old a spot at New Mexico’s state competition in May.
“I want to leave and go to the spelling bee,” Jimenez said. All Accurso could do was reassure him that people were trying to help.
“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. “It broke me, and it was something I never thought I’d encounter in life.”
You know, the kind of emotion most people have when they see a detained 9-year-old.
“We’re trying to get a child out of a jail to do a spelling bee,” she said. “I just never thought those words would go together.”
Before speaking with Jimenez, she spoke to 5-year-old Gael. Gael was detained along with their parents at an immigration checkpoint in El Paso, according to Elora Mukherjee, the family’s lawyer. Gael and their parents are only being identified by their first names for fear of retaliation if they are deported.
Both families are from Colombia, and they have pending asylum claims. Both families have been living and working in the country for years with no documented criminal history.
Gael, specifically, has some serious medical issues that the child’s family claims the center cannot accommodate.
Gael
The 5-year-old is nonverbal and has a history of severe constipation. His condition can be managed with a diet consisting of a lot of soups and fresh fruits. Something that this center allegedly cannot or will not accommodate. At the time of Accurso’s call, Gael hadn’t had a bowel movement in 9 days, according to his mother, Nelsy. To the point where his abdomen is distended, and he is struggling to eat.
“Imagine if your child hadn’t pooped in nine days,” she said. “This is not normal. This is an important medical situation.”
“No human being should ever go through this,” said father, Leonardo, about the entire situation.
The call with Gael was much shorter since the child started to become anxious. Something his parents say has become more common since they’ve been detained. The psychological impact on everyone forced into these situations cannot be overstated, and doubly so with children.
Accurso has repeatedly come under fire for her wild belief that all children are precious and equal. But because of this, she is working with local lawmakers “to close Dilley and make sure that kids and their parents are back in their communities where they belong.”
Despite all the aforementioned claims, the Department of Homeland Security dismisses these claims as “mainstream media lies.” Assuring the public that Dilley is a facility “purpose-built” for the needs of the families housed in it.
You can watch Accurso’s talk with Jimenez below:
