Ms. Rachel: Fighting to Free All Incarcerated Children
“I think the vast majority of Americans don't want children in jail”
The MAGA administration is deliberately targeting the sanctity of life. But one big-hearted celebrity is using her platform and her privilege to fight for incarcerated Brown children and their families. And she knows she can’t do it alone.
“Strong people stand up for themselves, but stronger people stand up for others,” Ms. Rachel said, imploring church leaders, legislators, and community leaders to speak up for families and the hundreds of children the MAGA administration is incarcerating.
“If you’re a Christian, why do you focus on the poor and immigrants so much?” The children’s education sensation asked on Threads.
“Because Jesus.” She answered.
Ms. Rachel’s advocacy for children started gaining traction when the wildly popular children’s educator and YouTuber started using her multimillion-follower platforms to criticize the unsanitary conditions and cruelty children are suffering in detention centers.
worms and mold in food
families threatened with separation
rank-smelling water, bottled water only available for purchase
sedating patients instead of treating them
inadequate and negligent medical care
people vomiting blood after eating raw meat
lights on 24 hours, extreme sleep deprivation
“This is how Core Civic’s detention center is treating kids while making over 100 million a year,” Ms. Rachel said in re-sharing investigative research about the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
Ms. Rachel isn’t just amplifying the facts; she’s humanizing the real victims.
Below is a screenshot of her video chat with 9-year-old Deiver Henao Jimenez, unlawfully detained in Texas before her public advocacy helped secure his release on March 25, 2026. ICE took him and his family at their monthly check-in for their asylum claim. They were following the rules.
The fourth-grader in New Mexico gifted and talented classes recently won a regional spelling bee, qualifying him for the state-level tournament. He told Ms. Rachel that “nothing is good here” at Dilley, that he missed his classmates, and he just wanted to go home and get ready for the spelling bee.
“We’re trying to get a child out of a jail to do a spelling bee,” NBC reported Ms. Rachel saying before Deiver’s release. “I just never thought those words would go together.”
Ms. Rachel also posted a GoFundMe to help him get to the spelling bee and to help his parents get back on their feet after their incarceration prevented them from working and earning any income.
She’s reaching out across social media to her 5 million Instagram followers, 9 million TikTok followers, and almost 20 million YouTube subscribers.
Deiver is the second child Ms. Rachel helped free in March 2026.
After significant public scrutiny, a viral video call with Ms. Rachel, and the diligence of attorney Elora Mukherjee, ICE released a non-verbal 5-year-old with significant medical distress after weeks of incarceration. Like Deiver, ICE also took the boy named Gael and his parents, also asylum seekers from Colombia who were following the requirements of their asylum application process. They were following the rules. They were “coming in the right way.”
The high-profile release of Deiver and Gael is as heartwarming as that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos. Liam’s little face and his floppy little blue bunny ears ravaged the hearts of anyone with a conscience. But they are not the only ones. DHS is still actively traumatizing hundreds more.
And they’re still at risk as long as this administration is prioritizing deportation quotas, racially targeting entire communities, and privatizing the profits.
We have to stay vigilant.
We know that every freed child is a victory worth celebrating. But it’s impossible to save one child at a time when DHS is incarcerating hundreds of them. Autistic children. Two-year-olds in extreme medical crisis that need advocacy from high-profile pediatricians like Dr. Anita Patel, M.D. Pregnant minors, likely raped by staff, guards, or fellow inmates. The one thing they all have in common is that they are terrified and their human and civil rights are being violated.
The solution is not incarcerating children at all.
So celebrities like Madonna, Keke Palmer, Pedro Pascal, Jane Fonda, and John Legend joined Ms. Rachel in an open call on Change.org for the closure of the Dilley facility specifically. In an open letter, the reunification of all children with their parents, and the release of all children from detention or incarceration.
“Children held in immigration detention endure trauma, neglect and conditions that violate basic standards of health, safety, dignity and human rights,” their letter reads in part. “Children belong in schools and on playgrounds, not in detention centers.”
Children’s champions Raffi and Steve Burns from Blue’s Clues also signed their names to the letter.
“We urge the federal government and CoreCivic to close the Dilley facility immediately, return children and families to the homes and communities they were taken from and to end child imprisonment now,” the letter concludes. “Our commitment does not end with closure. We demand transparency, accountability, and systemic reforms to prevent these abuses from happening anywhere in the United States.”
You can read a brief report from Kids In Need of Defense (KIND) here, including maps of current facilities detaining children across the U.S. by state.
Our “pro-life” government continues to incarcerate hundreds of children in these taxpayer-funded for-profit detention centers and “processing facilities.”
The Department of Homeland Security operates a vast web of “centers” and “facilities” through Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) with minimal regulation, transparency, or accountability.
It is, by no other name, a civil and humanitarian crisis.
Who is regulating or enforcing how long “temporary” detention can be? Who is responsible for preventing inhumane and unsanitary conditions? Why isn’t the legislature demanding the release of people incarcerated without arrest warrants, let alone legal conviction?
“I think the vast majority of Americans don’t want children in jail,” Ms. Rachel said. “They don’t want children to be abused and neglected.”
Children deserve a safe childhood where they can grow and thrive.
“Rachel believes all children are capable, brilliant and important,” her popular website enthuses. “She loves learning from them and being around their contagious joy and wonder.”
Capable. Brilliant. Important. Every single child suffering and scared in every single detention center funded by our tax dollars. Their contagious joy and wonder are being obliterated for profit.
“I am political,” Ms. Rachel said. “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.”
If you care about children, you should be “political” too.