Ms. Rachel brings children’s letters from ICE custody to Capitol Hill, including those from Colorado Springs family
Rachel Accurso — best known as Ms. Rachel — marched the steps of Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon to share handwritten letters and drawings from children, who describe their experiences being detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in south Texas.
Wearing a bubblegum suit and her iconic pink headband, the YouTube educator with over 20 million followers delivered the documents to members of Congress, according to The Washington Post and social media posts from the creator. All of the documents came from children held inside ICE’s only family detention center in Dilley, Texas, where one Colorado Springs-area family was held for nearly a year before a federal judge ordered their release.
“(Congress) needs to hear your words,” Accurso says in a TikTok video posted on her page. “Your voices are so valuable. You have human rights, and your rights should never be violated. And no child should ever be in detention.”
The suitcase contained several letters and drawings from the El Gamals, a local family with five children ages 5 to 18, the family’s attorney, Eric Lee, said. Hayam El Gamal and her family, originally from Egypt, were sent to the facility in early June of last year, days after her then-husband, Mohamed Soliman, threw Molotov cocktails at a crowd of Jewish protesters in a fatal attack in Boulder. The El Gamals were released from federal detention in late Aprill. Soliman probably will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“I felt that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family,” read one letter written by Hayam El Gamal’s 9-year-old daughter. Among the illustrations Accurso carried were portraits of the El Gamals’ old home and stick-figure people with sad faces who appear to be locked behind bars.
Accurso has spoken directly to some families held at the Dilley detention center through video calls and has publicly shared clips from several of those conversations on Instagram. She also helped launch a petition that has more than 324,000 signatures to close the facility.
The El Gamal family has been one of the few voices to describe what it’s like inside the Dilley facility, a privately owned family detention center that has been operated by CoreCivic since 2014, when Barack Obama was president.
Hayam El Gamal said in a public statement that detainees are given food “fit for animals” and that she and her children were “forced to watch officials rough up another detainee.” Hayam El Gamal was also allegedly denied medical treatment for a growing lump on her chest that was very painful, Lee said.
Mothers of some of the over 3,500 children cycled through the facility told investigative publication ProPublica that children were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide.
The allegations and others like it have been disputed by the Department of Homeland Security as “media lies.” CoreCivic said on its website that there is “misinformation” being spread about the company’s facilities, adding that it operates “clean facilities” and offers “balanced meals and clean drinking water.”
Organizations are also advocating for the end of the detainment of immigrant children, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. According to the organization, none of the DHS facilities meet basic standards for the care of children in residential settings.
Even in shorter length of stays, some children are found to suffer traumatic effects, according to the organization.
The issue goes beyond party lines and is something that will take both sides to resolve, Accurso said in one of her posts.