Rachel Accurso, the 43-year-old children’s entertainer known worldwide as Ms. Rachel, ignited a wave of online fury after publicly declaring her intention to help shut down a federal immigration detention center in South Texas.
Accurso built her fame through her YouTube channel, Songs for Littles, where her educational content for toddlers earned her a following of millions of parents and young children.
She has since expanded to Netflix and amassed 4.9 million Instagram followers.
Her jump into immigration politics began after federal agents detained five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father in Minneapolis in January, sending them both to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.
A widely circulated photograph of the boy wearing a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack brought the facility into the national spotlight.
Last week, journalist Lidia Terrazas, who has spent months reporting on conditions inside Dilley for the Spanish-language network N+ Univision, arranged a video call between Accurso and two children detained at the facility.
The first child Accurso spoke with was Gael, a five-year-old with significant developmental delays who is nonverbal.
Gael and his parents had been detained in El Paso during a routine immigration check-in while the child was in the middle of being assessed for autism, according to the family’s attorney.
Accurso then spoke with nine-year-old Deiver Henao Jimenez, who had been held at Dilley with his parents since early March.
Before his detention, Deiver had won his school’s spelling bee and placed third at regionals, qualifying for New Mexico’s state competition in May.
During the call, Deiver told Accurso the food at the facility made his stomach hurt. He also told her, “I want to leave and go to the spelling bee.”
Accurso posted the video call to her Instagram account, where it drew more than 3,700 comments.
She labeled the experience “devastating” and issued a public appeal: “Please let Deiver Henao out now so he can go to his spelling bee. Let his family back into their community. This is cruelty.”
Following the calls, Accurso told NBC News she is now coordinating 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.”
She reflected on the surreal nature of the exchange: “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.”
She added: “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 also declared, “I am political,” telling NBC News: “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.”
