Ms. Rachel pushes to close Texas detention center after detained children’s pleas

Video calls with detained children pushed Rachel Accurso, better known as Ms. Rachel, into a campaign to shut down the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas. After hearing children describe life inside the facility, the children’s educator said their distress was obvious and that the conditions amounted to a denial of basic human rights.

Accurso said she first learned about Dilley after federal immigration agents detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father in Minneapolis in January 2026 and sent them to the remote center about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio. The boy’s photo in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack drew national attention, but the broader picture was already taking shape inside the facility. Children at Dilley complained of limited education, lights that never turn off and moldy food, according to NBC News.

The South Texas Family Residential Center was built to house families and ICE has said it could ultimately hold up to 2,400 residents on its roughly 50-acre site. The agency has described the center as a family residential facility where the average stay is about 20 days under the Flores Settlement Agreement. ICE has defended the center as safe and family-friendly, but advocacy groups and media reports have also included sworn accounts from detained families describing poor medical care, inedible food and restrictions on communication and supplies.

The pressure on Dilley has intensified as the number of detained children climbed sharply. The Marshall Project reported in April 2026 that ICE had detained more than 6,200 children during Trump’s second term, about 10 times the level when Biden left office. That scale has made Dilley more than a single facility story; it has become a test of how much child detention the federal system is willing to absorb, and at what cost to children’s health and development.

A Texas judge also moved to free an Egyptian family of six that had been held at Dilley, believed to be the longest detained family there before their release in April 2026, according to Texas Public Radio. The case underscored how quickly temporary confinement can stretch into prolonged detention, even as officials insist the center is meant for short stays. For Accurso, who has built a public profile around children’s well-being, Dilley has become a national symbol of what detained children endure when the system treats family separation and confinement as routine.