“It’s cruelty, it’s child abuse, and neglect.”
That’s how Rachel Accurso — better known as beloved children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel — described conditions at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas after video chatting with 9-year-old detainee Deiver Henao Jimenez.
In the call, Deiver said he wished he could leave the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility so he could simply attend his school’s spelling bee.
“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 on March 21. “It broke me, and it was something I never thought I’d encounter in life.”
In the days since, Accurso has been detailing her conversations with Deiver and exposing the conditions of the facility, which include medical negligence, lights that never shut off, and moldy food.
“I can’t express how it felt to talk to a 9-year-old who is in an immigration detention center,” Accurso posted on Instagram. “It was devastating. Please let Deiver Henao out now so he can go to his spelling bee. Let his family back into their community. This is cruelty.”
When Accurso first launched her social media platforms, her content on Instagram and TikTok mirrored the same content on her famous YouTube channel. She largely posted children’s content that emphasized learning fundamentals, speech development techniques, and toddler milestones.
Outside of her official YouTube channel, Accurso has slowly shed her apolitical nature as she continually spoke out against violence, war, and systemic abuse.
“I am political,” Accurso told 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.”
For several years, Accurso has been using her social media platforms to raise awareness concerning atrocities against children.
In May 2024, she launched a fundraiser called “Messages for Littles to Help Littles,” and offered personalized Cameo videos to children. All proceeds went to the Save the Children Emergency Fund to support children affected by war and crises in places like Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Children should never experience the horrors of war; these are grave violations of their human rights,” Accurso emphasized in a TikTok last May. “Children should be protected, children should have healthy food, clean water, protection from violence, a safe place to live.”
In April 2025, she and her husband donated $1 million to the United Nations World Food Program USA, enabling the organization to provide about 2 million lifesaving meals to people facing extreme hunger around the world.
On February 28, the U.S.-Israel war with Iran resulted in civilian casualties when missiles destroyed a girl’s primary school in Minab, southern Iran, killing upwards of 175 people, the majority of them children.
On the same day of the missile strikes, Accurso took to Instagram to ask, “Can’t we all agree in this life not to kill children?”
“I HAVE said the Iranian government needs to stop killing children, too — everyone, everywhere — stop killing, starving, bombing, taking kids hostage & violating children’s human rights,” she wrote beneath a picture of text on a white background that read: “Stop killing kids.”
“Give them school,” she continued. “Give them medical care, give them safe, warm homes, give them everything they need to thrive.”
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Header image via Ms. Rachel
