Freeing children from ICE detention

“You have a real gift for spells. You’re very smart.”

Then he smiled a little.

“It was so amazing to see this sweet little face and I felt like I was on the phone with someone who was incarcerated,” Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, told NBC News in an exclusive interview this week. “It hurt me, and it was something I never thought I would ever experience in my life.”

Like many Americans, Accurso said he first learned about the family detention center in Dilley, Texas, in January, after immigration agents arrested the father of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minneapolis and sent them both to a remote, prison-like facility. A photo of the child – wearing a green bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack – went viral online, drawing national attention to the facility and the treatment of families held there. They were eventually released but the family’s asylum application was rejected this week.

In the first year of the expanded immigration crackdown, the Trump administration detained more than 2,300 children and their parents, most of them in custody at Dilley, according to figures provided by court-appointed watchdogs. Many have been detained for weeks or months.

Meanwhile, Accurso — whose educational videos for children and toddlers have made him one of the most recognized children’s artists in the country — has become a prominent voice for at-risk children. He drew attention to the plight of children in war-torn Gaza, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and withdrawing from critics who accused him of taking sides in world conflicts.

He has repeatedly defended his advocacy under the simple phrase: “I see all children as valuable and equal.”

After his video call last week with Deiver and another boy held at Dilley, Accurso told NBC News that he is now starting a new mission closer to home: working with lawyers and immigrant rights activists “to close Dilley and make sure that children and their parents are back in their communities where they live.”

Parents and immigration advocates have described children losing weight after getting worms in their food, growing anxious as security guards roam and standing in line for hours to get a single dose of medicine. Some have experienced medical emergencies while incarcerated.

About 50 children remained at Dilley this week, down from about 500 in January, The New York Times reported Friday based on a review of government statistics and a lobbying group’s estimates. Some of the families were released in the US; others were fired. It’s unclear what led to the sharp decline, but it follows months of pressure from civil rights advocates, Democratic members of Congress and immigration advocates.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the families who met Accurso via video. The organization has dismissed reports of poor conditions as “mainstream media lies,” saying Dilley families are being provided with comprehensive care in a “purpose-built” facility for their needs.

The more Accurso learned about Dilley after Liam’s arrest, he said, the more concerned he became. Then, last week, he got the chance to hear directly from the children kept there.

Journalist Lidia Terrazas, who has spent months reporting on the situation inside Dilley for Spanish-language network N+ Univision, set up a video call.

Before talking to Deiver, Accurso talked to Gael, a 5-year-old with severe developmental delays. The boy, who did not say anything, was in the process of being tested for autism when he and his parents were detained at the El Paso immigration office, according to the family’s attorney, Elora Mukherjee. Like Deiver’s family, Gael’s parents fled Colombia, are still awaiting asylum applications and have no criminal record in the US, and had been working and living in the country for years before their arrests, the families’ lawyers said.

Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, said Gael had a history of severe constipation that was managed at home with special diets, including fresh fruit and soups. Detained, he said, his condition continued to worsen.

In a brief video interview Friday, Gael’s parents, Nelsy and Leonardo, told NBC News that their son’s condition continued to deteriorate in custody, both physically and emotionally. They asked to be identified only by their first names, fearing reprisals if they are deported to Colombia.

“This is not his place because he needs special care,” Leonardo said, as Gael wandered around the empty, gray room. “No one should have to go through this.”

In Accurso’s phone call with her, Gael’s mother said her son had been unable to urinate for nine days and was struggling, covering his mouth when he tried. The center had been treating him with laxatives and later gave him an enema, but his condition could not have been much better, his mother said. Her stomach seemed distended, Accurso said, leaving her “very concerned.”

“Imagine if your child had not had a bowel movement in nine days,” she said. “This is not normal. This is a serious medical condition.”

As her mother spoke, Accurso slipped into character and tried to engage her — singing “Wheels on the Bus,” holding up a toy and talking to her about his love of trains — but she seemed restless and frustrated, she said.

Amidst her confusion and discomfort, Gael has grown increasingly depressed at Dilley, Mukherjee said, sometimes hitting herself — behavior her parents had never seen before.

“Treating a child like this is a crime,” Accurso told NBC News. “The neglect and abuse of children.”

Accurso said he’s not that worried about Deiver anymore.

In their brief conversation, she quickly moved past the conditions inside the facility to what she missed outside of it – her classmates, her gifted and talented subjects and, most of all, the spelling bee she had been preparing for.

“He’s very proud,” Accurso said.

The juxtaposition, he said, was hard to process: a kid talking about his love of pizza and school one moment, then asking for help getting out of a state detention center the next.

“We’re trying to get a kid out of jail so he can spell,” he said. “I never thought those words would go together.”

Accurso recalled winning her second-grade spelling bee with a lucky guess on the word “chocolate” — a small victory, one she still remembers in vivid detail.

Moments like that are more than milestones, said Accurso, who has a master’s degree in music and early childhood development. They shape how children see themselves – their self-esteem, their sense of belonging, their sense of what’s next.

Taking those kinds of opportunities away from a child, he said, is “cruel.”

After speaking with the children, Accurso said he was initially hesitant to speak publicly.

His advocacy for children in Gaza led to criticism from right-wing groups who accused him of being anti-Semitic for focusing on Palestinian children instead of Israelis. Accurso fired back at those claims, noting that he represents children who suffer on both sides of the conflict. The dispute has led to threats against her family, she said, and she worries that talking about the ICE arrest could escalate the situation.

But he kept coming back to the example set by Fred Rogers, the late children’s television star he considered his hero, who used his platform to speak up for children.

In the end, he said, the decision felt clear.

And unlike in the past, when he desperately wanted to position his activism as a political one, Accurso said he is ready to accept the label.

“I have politics,” he said. “It is a political idea to believe that children deserve to be loved and cared for, that all children are equal, and that our care should not stop at the way we look, at our family, at our religion, at the border.”

If being political is what it takes to bring Gael home, or get Deiver in the spelling bee, Accurso says, his conscience leaves him no choice.